However partisan the atmosphere in Washington may be, there is one thing I thought there should be a consensus on -- the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is badly out of the mainstream on criminal cases generally and capital cases in particular. Therefore, any appointments to that court should be made with the purpose of correcting toward the middle.

    Astonishingly, the Administration has done just the opposite. It has nominated Berkeley Professor Goodwin Liu. When Justice Alito was nominated, Professor Liu wrote a paper titled "Judge Alito and the Death Penalty." I wrote a rebuttal.

    To anyone familiar with the death penalty debate, it is painfully evident that Professor Liu takes the murderers' side on every debatable point. If confirmed, there is no doubt in my mind that he will be a vote to obstruct the enforcement of capital punishment in virtually every case. Adding him to the Ninth would take a court that is already far out of the judicial mainstream and push it even further in that direction.

    This calls for pull-out-the-stops opposition. The West suffers to this day from appointments made by Jimmy Carter on the advice of Alan Cranston three decades ago. We don't need more bad appointments to plague us for another generation.