Redefining the Judicial Mainstream

President Bush has renominated twenty judges whose confirmations the Democrats had blocked in his first term. Some Dems are all aflutter that the President would have the temerity to bring them back for reconsideration now that he has a stronger position in the senate, but he has, and he appears to have every intention of seeing them confirmed. Here are a couple of snips from the LA Times' story:

"The President is at it again with extremist judges," said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). "Last year, the Senate worked to confirm 204 of the president's judicial nominees and rejected only the 10 most extreme."

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, said the judges who were filibustered last year and have been renominated "are out of the mainstream and will not be confirmed by the Senate, unless they have drastically modified their views and ideologies."

Because the Republicans now have 55 of the Senate's 100 members, their hand is stronger in attempts to break a filibuster. It takes 60 votes in the Senate to cut off debate. Senate Majority leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has indicated that if Democrats again attempt filibusters, he might seek a ruling from the Senate that 51 votes, not 60, would be needed to stop a filibuster on a judicial nomination.

What the story doesn't tell us is exactly what it is about these judges that offends Senators Reid and Schumer. Why do they say the nominees are "extremists"? Is it because they believe judges should interpret the law, not make it? Is it because they are practicing Christians? Is it because they are pro-life? Is it that they are conservative? Any of these, of course, would place a candidate far out on the edge of the political solar system as far as Senator Schumer is concerned, but the article doesn't help us understand what their extremism consists in.

We suppose we'll have to wait till the hearings to find out and to see if the nominees have had the good sense in the meantime to have "drastically modified" their Christian beliefs and other distasteful radicalisms enough to veer them back into the "mainstream". It's important that these prospective judges conform to the high standards of such as Senator Schumer and make themselves acceptable to Lefty Democrats who, of course, have been hunkered down in the mainstream for forty years.