Obama’s Judicial Nominee Hides Leftwing History

The ardently leftist California law school professor nominated by President Obama to become a federal appellate court judge suspiciously concealed more than 100 of his most controversial speeches, publications and other background materials from the U.S. Senate committee that screens judicial candidates.

Obama’s pick to fill a vacancy on the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals, UC Berkeley Professor Goodwin Liu, conveniently omitted a mountain of contentious material that could hurt his confirmation process. The records shed light on Liu’s leftist positions in areas such as “constitutional welfare rights,” affirmative action, judicial activism and immigration.

The 39-year-old scholar, who has practiced law for only three years, hid questionable speeches on affirmative action, his participation at events sponsored by the notoriously leftwing Center for Social Justice and the influential Latino advocacy group National Council of La Raza, among others, from the Senate Judiciary Committee.

This week the committee’s ranking member, Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions, said Liu’s nomination is in jeopardy after the “extraordinary omission of 117 Items from record.” At best, this nominee’s extraordinary disregard for the committee’s constitutional role demonstrates incompetence; at worst, it creates the impression that he knowingly attempted to hide his most controversial work from the committee, Session says.

The  “glaring omissions” were reluctantly provided by Liu only after the committee discovered them independently and are detailed in a lengthy letter from Republican members to Chairman Patrick Leahy. Among them is Liu’s commencement speech to UC Berkeley Law, his participation in a panel entitled “What the 2008 Election Will Mean for the Supreme Court” and his participation in a presentation entitled “The Fate of Affirmative Action from the O’Connor Court to the Roberts Court.”

Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, has praised Liu as a “great American story” and claims he has “sterling credentials.” The son of Taiwanese immigrants, Liu will bring much-needed diversity to the federal bench, Leahy says, because there are currently no active Asian American federal appeals court judges in the country.

Liu should fit right in at the ridiculously liberal 9^th Circuit which has been overturned more than any other court and covers Alaska, Arizona, California, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and the Northern Marianas. Among its latest rulings of note is that a violent felon with multiple convictions can’t be deported because tattooed criminals like him are harassed by gangs and police in his native El Salvador.