I have noted
before the crying need to fill the vacancies of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to bring that ideologically lopsided court back to some semblance of balance. That effort took a hit yesterday, in a particularly ugly way.
A question for all mature readers: Did you write anything in your youth in a tone more shrill and strident than you would consider acceptable today? If not, you were probably either one boring kid or one who didn't write anything. Nearly all of us would answer that question yes.
Yesterday, Ninth Circuit nominee Ryan Bounds withdrew his nomination shortly before the vote when Sen. Tim Scott said he "did not have enough information" to vote yes and Sen. Marco Rubio followed suit. Jordain Carney and Alexander Bolton have
this story in The Hill.
The controversy relates to articles written as a student over 20 years ago, including
this one. The thrust of the article is a protest against Political Correctness and particularly the obnoxious identity-politics groups. The youthful Mr. Bounds did what students often do, take a little knowledge picked up in a course and go off on a tangent with it, this time applying the "group think" theory of Irving Janis to identity politics. One can easily criticize the extrapolation, but college is
supposed to be a place where one can freely float ideas without being in danger that your career will be torpedoed by it decades later.
The Hill story notes this passage as particularly raising hackles:
"I am mystified because these tactics seem always to contribute more to
restricting consciousness, aggravating intolerance and pigeonholing cultural identities than many a Nazi bookburning," he
wrote.
Yes, of course, Nazi allusions are almost always a bad idea in political debate. Is everyone who has made them permanently disqualified for public office? If so, the pool has just shrunk dramatically. And remember, folks, those anonymous Internet comments aren't really anonymous. The criticism of the identity politics groups as being divisive and making things worse instead of better with their tactics is an inconvenient truth.
And there is this: "In another article he compared diversity training to a 'pestilence.' "
Well, sometimes it is. I remember well a course I had to attend in the Air Force, circa 1980. The term "diversity training" had not been coined, but it was the same idea. There were two instructors. One used a soft-sell approach and produced some helpful discussions. The other was a confrontational jerk who only angered people and made things worse instead of better. To the extent that later "diversity training" was conducted by the latter type, yes, "pestilence" is a good term.
So if Sen. Scott was still uncertain and needed more information, why did this nomination go to the floor before that was resolved? The Hill reports,
"Sen. Scott needed more time to talk to people who knew him and
that's not available. Sen. Scott said he couldn't vote for him today if
the vote was now. I support him in that decision," Rubio told reporters.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) confirmed that he understood Scott objected to the nominee
because of racially insensitive comments in the past, but had not spoken
to Scott directly.
Grassley, however, said that Republicans on
the Judiciary Committee had discussed the issue thoroughly with Bounds
and had satisfied their own concerns.
"He didn't know that was
thoroughly discussed with the nominee in our committee," Grassley said
of Scott's participation in the vetting.
Scott declined to say if
Bounds's previous writings were why he could not support Trump's
nominee on Thursday. He also declined to say when he found out about the
writings.
Scott is not a member of the Judiciary Committee,
which is responsible for vetting judicial nominations and which advanced
Bounds's nomination on a party-line vote.
He said he began
voicing his concerns to leadership on Wednesday and talked to
Bounds on Thursday. He separately spoke at a closed-door lunch on
Thursday to tell his colleagues he needed more information before he
could vote to confirm Bounds.
Page Cool Hand Luke. "What we have here is a failure to communicate." This is a botched job, and it means we have to start over filling a vacancy on a court with too many.
The double standard lives.
Justice Sotomayor can expressly link the quality of judging with ethnicity while a sitting judge, and the 'rats love her.
Rubio is weak, and Tim Scott had a bad day of judgment.
A Democrat shouldn't ever get to have a judge again.