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: Ninomania

By David M. Wagner

Mukasey nomination: If this were the start of the administration, I might want someone who doesn't carry the burden of a Nan Aron and a Chuck Schumer recommendation. For a Supreme Court appointment, I certainly would. But for a short seat as AG, I support this nomination -- if only for the way Judge Mukasey once faced down Bill Kunstler:

William M. Kunstler, a lawyer for one of the Muslim defendants in the 1993World Trade Center bombing, asked Mukasey to recuse himself from the case because he is Jewish. Kunstler accused the judge and his wife of having ties to Israel that would influence his opinions. In his official response, Mukasey wrote that "to respond to such inquiries is to concede the relevance of the information" to the way he might rule from the bench.

I can't say the same for some of his erstwhile supporters. From the same Washington Post article:

"He's not an ideologue for the sake of being an ideologue," said Andrew Ruffino, a former law clerk of the nominee's.

Yes, I'm sure a lot of people will recognize themselves in that: got up one morning, said to heck with first principles, let's just be ideologues for the sake of being ideologues! Way to understand the other side, Andrew! Then this:

Said Bruce Ackerman, a Yale law professor who was a classmate of Mukasey's: "He is not a hyper-charged Federalist Society type. He is not a glad-hand networker."

So that's what the Federalist Society is all about: caffeine and rope lines! The academic conferences are just window-dressing, then, and all the A-list liberals who come to them are dupes...!

Full post as published by Ninomania on September 18, 2007 (boomark / email).