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After reading Sylvia Smith’s column Nov. 22, “Attempt to appease GOP earns slap in face,” I only had one question: Is she kidding?
Smith cites President Obama’s consultation with Sen. Richard Lugar, choosing an Indiana jurist as his first nominee for a federal appeals court and in particular, a judge who has worked in the past with Sen. Evan Bayh as proof Republicans weren’t left out of the process of selecting a nominee, that Hoosiers weren’t ignored by President Obama after he carried Indiana in the 2008 election and Senate Republicans could be assured the President’s choice would be a moderate. The problem is, the president’s efforts to appease Indiana and the GOP, as Smith put it, are disingenuous.
Firstly, the selection of Judge David Hamilton for the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals is not the selection of a moderate by any definition of the word moderate (except for Smith), but rather the selection of a leftist ideologue whose record as a judge proves as much. His rulings that state legislators couldn’t pray to Jesus Christ at the beginning of legislative sessions and a menorah couldn’t be placed in a municipal building’s holiday display shows a poor record on religious liberty, and his record also shows him to be too lenient in criminal cases, including child predators.
Secondly, the consulting of Senator Lugar for judicial appointments doesn’t mean much, as his voting record on previous nominations leaves much to be desired.
Lastly, if the president wanted to appease the GOP, he could have nominated somebody who will uphold the Constitution and not be a judicial activist. The president’s brief history of judicial selections proves otherwise.
In the last half of the column, Smith uses her claim of the president’s appeasement to the GOP resulting in a face slap, so to speak, to portray most of the Senate Republicans as being party loyalists, opposing the president’s selection simply because a Democratic president did the selecting. Judge Hamilton’s record was more than enough reason for his nomination to be opposed.
To call the president’s selection of Judge Hamilton an attempt at appeasing the GOP is like calling Karl Marx a conservative. For the president, it was about image, to look like he was trying to be bipartisan. The fact is, President Obama wasn’t appeasing anybody with his selection, and Smith doesn’t see it.
Morgan Rigg
Butler
