The Right Coast |
|
|
Thoughts from San Diego on Law, Politics, and Culture
Right Coasters
Gail Heriot Saikrishna Prakash Michael Rappaport Maimon Schwarzschild Thomas Smith Christopher Wonnell Email Us Gail Heriot Saikrishna Prakash Michael Rappaport Maimon Schwarzschild Thomas Smith Christopher Wonnell Links Andrew Sullivan Atlantic Blog The Buck Stops Here Corporate Law Blog Crescat Sententia Crooked Timber Curmudgeonly Clerk Daniel Drezner En Banc EveTushnet.Com FreeSpace How Appealing Instapundit Law and Econ Blog Little Green Footballs Legal Theory Blog The Leiter Reports Marginal Revolution Overlawyered Pejmanesque ProfBainbridge.Com Punishment Theory Rasmusen Weblog SFA Politics & Relig Southern Appeal SpoonsExperience USS Clueless The Volokh Conspiracy The Yin Blog Archives The Bear Flag League Aaron's Rantblog (LA) Absinthe & Cookies Accidental Jedi (Fres) Angry Clam (LA) Baldilocks BlogoSFERICS (Expat) BoifromTroy (LA) CalBlog (Los Angeles) California Republic Citizen Smash(SD) Cobb (Los Angeles) Daily Pundit (SF) Dale Franks e-Claire(Northern CA) Fresh Potatoes(Orang) Infinite Monkeys The Interocitor (LA) The Irish Lass (Sacra) Left Coast Conserv. Lex Communis (Fres) Master of None (LA) Miller's Time (Sac) Molly's Musings (SD) Mulatto Boy (LA) Howard Owens (Vent) Pathetic Earthlings) Patio Pundit Patterico's Pontifications(LA) PrestoPundit (Orange) QandO Right on the Left Beach Shark Blog (Expat) Slings and Arrows (SD) So. Cal Law Blog (LA) Tone Cluster Window Manager Xrlq (Orange) 
|
November 10, 2005
No relation By Tom Smith Neither Smith being considered for the 9th circuit is any relation to yours truly. It's always nice when the suggestion of your being nominated to a federal circuit court is itself a joke. Thanks, Glenn. You're a riot. Curiously, one of the Smith's, one Randy Smith, is a state district judge in Idaho, as was my father, also a Smith, before he retired. However, none of we Smith's are Mormons, as I gather Judge Randy Smith probably is, having gone to BYU. The California Smith, Milan Smith, also went to BYU, and may also be LDS, which is fine with me, but calls himself "a conservative with a heart," a term I find objectionable. As presumably a liberal would find "a liberal with a brain" objectionable. Or a communist would find "a communist with a conscience," objectionable, in which case you would be shot. I fear "having a heart" for a judge means not letting the law get in the way of promoting some disastrous, but well-meaning social policy dreamnt up by some badly educated person in the 1920's and reworked many times since. (My nomination chances being nil, I might as well be frank.) One senses the hand of Senator Hatch in these potential picks. Has the White House just given up on trying to get right-thinking sorts on the 9th Circuit, or is the idea that anyone who went to BYU law school automatically right-thinking? It may be so, the same way you assume someone who went to Yale thinks diversity jurisdiction has to do with civil rights. Years ago I thought about applying for a job teaching at BYU law school, and even had sort of an interview with some BYU alums. I skipped the usual beer with lunch. I read some materials about the place and inferred I would not be able to keep my beard and neither to drink spirits. If I shaved my beard my lovely wife Jeanne would kill me, and if I could not drink, I would kill myself, so it was out. All that being said, I am overall pro-Mormon. However, after Hariett Miers, I am not willing to take religion as proof of judicial reliability. |