No Such Thing as a Too-Liberal Supreme Court Nominee

Face it: If President Obama nominated Robert "Attila the Hun was a Socialist" Bork to the Supreme Court, Senate repugs would still filibuster him.

That's just one reason why any nominee more conservative than the most liberal lawyers on the planet would be appeasement to the wingnut freakazoids.

David Dayen at Firedoglake reviews the likely candidates and finds them disappointingly moderate:

I think the typical liberal reaction to these names would be “Huh,” but one informed in legal matters would prefer Wood, be wary of Kagan’s views on executive power (though she was generally fulfilling her duties as Solicitor General in that capacity) and be cool toward Garland.

The Nation has a more exciting list in slideshow form, including a Native American.

As I wrote last month, shoving four or five flaming liberals down the Senate's throat is not a fantasy; it's the bare minimum required to restore the democratic Constitution and Rule of Law.

I don't know who the most liberal lawyer in the country is right now - Alan Grayson comes to mind - but whoever it is, that's who President Obama needs to nominate to the Supreme Court to replace soon-to-retire Justice John Paul Stephens.

Because it's going to take the appointment of at least four more-liberal-than-you-can-possibly-imagine Justices to return the Court to its relatively balanced makeup of 30 years ago. By which standard Sonia Sotomayor is a moderate.

And to truly turn the court back into the liberal activist Warren Court that made the Constitutional promise of equal rights for all into reality, to undo the far-right, anti-Democratic radicalism of Chief Justice John Roberts and his henchmen Alito, Scalia and Thomas, it's going to take at least five real liberals.

We've long since settled the issue of "judicial activism:" all judges are judicial activists. The only question is how soon we're going to replace the last 40 years of wingnut freakazoid judicial activists with a century of liberal judicial activists.