Don’t be too uplifted about a handful of Trump resistance victories this week, however welcome. We face a lifetime of ill consequences from only a year of the Trump tenure thanks to his judicial appointments.
This op-ed from a former federal judge,
The parade of
John Bush (confirmed 51-47) will sit on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. While blogging under a pseudonym in 2008, he compared the Dred Scott decision to Roe v. Wade, saying that both “relied on similar reasoning and activist justices” and that “slavery and abortion” are the “two greatest tragedies in our country.” On his Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire he failed to disclose that he belonged to a social club that, for years, had excluded African-Americans, women and Jews.
And then there’s Leonard Steven Grasz of Omaha. He was judged unqualified by an American Bar Association review team headed by Cynthia Nance, a UA law
Leonard Steven Grasz, a nominee for the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is based in St. Louis, received a rare “not qualified” rating from the American Bar Association because his “temperament issues, particularly bias and lack of open-mindedness, were problematic.” He serves on the board of an organization that has supported the closing of clinics offering women reproductive care, has condemned Supreme Court decisions that protect women’s rights, and has asserted that abortions put women’s lives at risk.
Mr. Grasz, a lawyer in Omaha, has supported “conversion therapy” for gay youth and legislation that would allow employers to discriminate against gay employees under the guise of religious liberty. To Mr. Grasz, marriage equality is a “threat” and evolution should be taught as a theory, not as a fact.
They are all this bad. I won’t mention some of the stalwart Republicans angling for coming openings on the bench in Arkansas. This is depression enough for one day.
UPDATE: Then there’s this nominee from Alabama, just reported confirmed by LA Times.
Brett J. Talley, President Trump’s nominee to be a federal judge in Alabama, has never tried a case, was unanimously rated “not qualified” by the American Bar Assn.’s judicial rating committee, has practiced law for only three years and, as a blogger last year, displayed a degree of partisanship unusual for a judicial nominee, denouncing “Hillary Rotten Clinton” and pledging support for the National Rifle Assn.