Maybe the Obama administration should have nominated George Hamilton instead of David F. Hamilton. The hollywood actor may have an easier time at confirmation.Watch Hamilton in action here.
The conservative judicial groups believe President Obama’s first judicial pick is a hard left liberal. Let me give you a sampling of what they’re saying about Judge David F. Hamilton:
Read below from Wendy Long with the Judicial Confirmation Network:
Hamilton has a history as a hard-left political activist, and his choice signals that Obama does intend to push extreme liberals onto the bench and politicize the courts as we've never seen before.
Hamilton was a fundraiser for ACORN (nice ACORN payback, Mr. President) and served as vice president for litigation and a board member of the Indiana ACLU. In 1994, when President Clinton nominated him to the district court, the ABA rated him as ‘not qualified,’ apparently because of his almost purely political (as opposed to legal and judicial) experience.
Have a look at the comments of Ed Whelan, President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He’s scratching his head as to how Judge Hamilton can be even remotely considered a moderate:
It’s far from clear what justifies the article’s characterization of Hamilton as a “moderate”…Was it perhaps Hamilton’s service as vice president for litigation, and as a board member, of the Indiana branch of the ACLU? Or maybe Hamilton’s extraordinary seven-year-long series of rulings obstructing Indiana’s implementation of its law providing for informed consent on abortion? That obstruction elicited this strong statement (emphasis added) from the Seventh Circuit panel majority that overturned Hamilton:
For seven years Indiana has been prevented from enforcing a statute materially identical to a law held valid by the Supreme Court in Casey, by this court in Karlin, and by the fifth circuit in Barnes. No court anywhere in the country (other than one district judge in Indiana [i.e., Hamilton]) has held any similar law invalid in the years since Casey. Although Salerno does not foreclose all pre-enforcement challenges to abortion laws, it is an abuse of discretion for a district judge to issue a pre-enforcement injunction while the effects of the law (and reasons for those effects) are open to debate.
Or perhaps Hamilton’s inventive invocation of substantive due process to suppress evidence of a criminal defendant’s possession of cocaine, a ruling that, alas, was unanimously reversed by the Seventh Circuit?
With “moderates” like Hamilton, imagine what Obama’s “liberal” nominees will look like.
More here.
Part of the problem on Hamilton is that there is a lot of red meat topics here. When you rule on sensitive issues like abortion and separation of church and state it becomes a magnet for conservative groups to galvanize against you. Let’s face it. If he had some liberal ruling on an anti-trust case the yawn factor would be huge. But people pay more attention on abortion rulings.
Stay tuned. This thing may get ugly.