Look who Obama is nominating as judges

Hans Bader writes:

President Obama has nominated the controversialJudge Robert Chatigny to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Chatigny unsuccessfully attempted to block the execution of serial murderer and rapist Michael Ross, the “Roadside Strangler,” saying that his “sexual sadism” should be a mitigating factor barring his execution — even though Ross himself did not claim that his death-sentence was in any way inappropriate. Yet Democrats and even a few Republicans are likely to vote to confirm Chatigny.

Obama has also nominated the radical lawyer Goodwin Liu to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Liu is hostile to “’free enterprise, private ownership of property, and limited government.’ According to Liu, these are ‘code words for an ideological agenda hostile to environmental, workplace, and consumer protections.’” Liu also believes in “a constitutional right to welfare.“ Liu is also a big user of politically-correct psychobabble, writing that a judge is supposed to be a “culturally situated interpreter of social meaning” rather than an impartial umpire who interprets the law in accord with its plain meaning or its framers’ intent.

Bar association standards say lawyers are supposed to have practiced law for at least 12 years before being nominated to a judgeship, and should also have “substantial courtroom and trial experience.“ Liu has no trial experience, and had not even been out of law school for 12 years at the time he was nominated, meaning he was by definition unqualified under ABA standards. But a liberal ABA committee, showing ideological bias, rubberstamped his nomination anyway, ignoring his lack of the required qualifications, since its members shared his extreme political views...