Friday, January 23, 2009

Fool Me Three Times....

J. Harvie Wilkinson, a judge on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, is an interesting fellow. Very conservative, he still manages to skirt under my "radical right-wing" radar, despite several blatant provocations. The first time I came across him, it was in the context of an appalling church/state opinion which basically ruled the state could discriminate against Wiccans. Then it slipped my mind, and so when he wrote a really dumb article reacting to the Seattle and Louisville desegregation cases, I was really surprised.

Now Wilkinson is out in the Washington Post calling for a truce in ideological picks for his circuit (known as the most conservative in the nation). Does he recognize that his court is known might fairly be described as being slanted far to the right? Nope. Did he call for a similar truce or ceasefire at any point in the Bush administration. Of course not.

A little suspicious, don't you think?

1 comment:

PG said...

Does he recognize that his court is known as being slanted far to the right?

Did you read the 2nd sentence?
"Popular commentary has it that the court, on which I serve, is a fortress or bastion or citadel of conservatism."

I loathed his prayer opinion too, but in fairness to Wilkinson, he doesn't always toe the right-wing line; he had a quite surprising article last year criticizing Heller as being "judicial activism" in the vein of Roe v. Wade.