Goodwin Liu, who is 39, was nominated to be an appellate judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals earlier this year and submitted this:
[…] links to YouTube videos of lectures and talks he gave, along with 573 pages of public writings, new articles about him, syllabi from courses he taught, statements about legal issues, etc. Liu searched 36 websites, including the ACLU of Northern California and Yale Law School, for any mentions of himself.
Even so, he’s had to amend his disclosure four times to add more, and send groveling letters to the Judiciary Committee:
In the latest correspondence, he writes that he missed some public appearances that he should have known about initially and that he did not think to include appearances at such occasions as brown bag lunches and alumni gatherings.
And he gets this from Jeff Sessions:
[T]he Ranking Member of the committee, said that based on the “glaring omissions” Liu may have “knowingly attempted to hide his most controversial work.” The letter was signed by all seven Republicans on the committee.“Professor Liu’s unwillingness to take seriously his obligation to complete these basic forms is potentially disqualifying and has placed his nomination in jeopardy,” Sessions wrote.
I’d like to know more about Elena Kagan, but judging from Liu’s experience, the one thing I know with certainty is that she was smart to keep her mouth shut.
me
Jeff Sessions is a fucking asshole. Oops, now I’m disqualified from being a federal judge.
eric
baseball may be America’s past time, but Calvinball is the GOP’s past time.
No worry about hobgobblins in the GOP.
eric
mr. whipple
Yup. This whole thing has become such a farce.
Violet
Brown bag lunches and alumni gatherings? Really? The silliness knows no bounds. What if there had been no video or transcript? Gasp! The horror! It would almost be as if it hadn’t existed.
Request: Can the Senators who signed this letter please take a film crew with them to document every move they make. I want to be sure we don’t miss something important.
Davis X. Machina
No surprise.
Expecting otherwise is like expecting six of the — let me check my schedule — Detroit Tigers joining the Boston Red Sox to make sure the good people at Comerica Park get their money’s worth this afternoon.
I fully expect the next Republican-led Congress to remove E pluribus unum from our coinage — elitist (hey, it’s in Latin), collectivist, and just plain old — with the immortal words of perhaps our most-unfairly neglected Founding Father, the Oakland Raiders’ Al Davis — “Just Win, Baby”.
Michael Scott
Yes, he’s clearly “hiding” some of his public appearances from the helpless deaf, dumb and blind autistics on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Those overlooked brown bag lunches are precisely where Liu’s Trotskyite revolutionary theories are exposed!
Is it a requirement now that the GOP Senators be as lazy, paranoid and stupid as the Tea Baggers who vote for them?
Davis X. Machina
The usual theories of representative government more or less demand it. Although to comport perfectly with theory, the ideal GOP representative should be lazy, paranoid, stupid, and corrupt. Someone must speak for business, too.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Shorter Sessions: “He’s foreign and he’s been nominated by President ScaryHusseinMarxistObama. Off with his head!
mcd410x
That’s a mighty nice strawman you’ve got there.
Citizen_X
Meanwhile, weren’t you dying to know what Newt Gingrinch has to say about Kagan? Apparently, he wants Obama to withdraw her nomination, for a bizarre set of reasons.
DougJ
There are too many Asians in the courts already. Why not some real Murkins, people you’d meet at the Applebee’s salad bar, somewhere *outside* the Acela corridor?
SiubhanDuinne
It seems recently that every time I turn on an NPR news program, there’s ol’ Jefferson Beauregard Sessions the Whateverth
sounding forthdrawling on about Kagan. Why do the MorningEditionWeekendEditionAllThingsConsidered producers feel obliged to offer him a microphone every day?Citizen Alan
My god I despise Jeff Sessions. What a loathsome, beady-eyed piece of human shit. It’s like Mike Judge somehow summoned Cotton Hill from King of the Hill to life and then made him a Senator, except Cotton Hill had his legs blown off in Korea, while Sessions made it through Vietnam in the Army Reserves without ever being called up to active duty.
Davis X. Machina
@Citizen_X: The unfortunate thing is I have heard every one of Newt’s reasons given on DemocraticUnderground.com too.
Hypnos
Gingrich: “[…] concerns that during her time as Dean, Harvard Law accepted money from Saudi Arabia.”
For Christ’s sake the second largest shareholder of Fox News after Rupert Murdoch is a Saudi prince! What the fuck!
Wilson Heath
Yes, because the most radical work of any faculty member is reserved for a alumni gatherings.
There is no lie too stupid for Jeff Sessions to push. Good thing his own nomination was appropriately torpedoed before such a hack political operative got a lifetime appointment.
gbear
@SiubhanDuinne:
Because the MorningEditionWeekendEditionAllThingsConsidered producers suck cocktail weiners.
Alex S.
He still hasn’t submitted anything related to his sexual orientation!
gbear
@Alex S.:
Are you referring to Goodwin Liu or to Jeff Sessions?
Ash Can
The film would be immediately impounded by the FBI’s RICO division, with surreptitious copies bootlegged to gay porn sites.
Nick
I remember during the Sotomayor nomination some firebagger saying the best thing for the President to do is nominate an uber liberal who looks like a moderate.
Oscar Leroy
Not to mention the blinding integrity she has shown by doing a 180 on her belief that court nominees should explain where they stand.
sherifffruitfly
And the self-proclaimed “true progressives” whining about “blank slate” do so for precisely the same reason as republicans – they just don’t want her. And just like republicans, it’s simply because Obama nominated her.
rikyrah
Kagan was smart to keep her mouth shut?
I don’t think so.
Liu just has to hang in there through this bullshyt, until confirmation.
Sorry, but I believe in paper trails.
I believe that we should know how people stand. it’s up to the Democrats to defend our nominees.
He’s only 39…yes……all we gotta do is get him into the pipeline.
kay
@Oscar Leroy:
Nah. The “blank slate” idea or the assumption that she’s stonewalling is premature, and therefore unfair. They’re releasing a lot of information. It’s her whole work record in the Clinton WH. It will be (I think) what they’re calling (broadly) “strategy memos”, so not judicial opinions, but being a federal judge was never a requirement for SCOTUS, and it’s not important, to me, anyway. I have no problem with no judicial record. I don’t think that should be a requirement.
We’ll be able to get a real feel for the way she thinks and operates, and that could provide an opportunity for legit and good question (not from these idiots, but it could be done). She’ll probably have to explain some of this work. In my view, the “blank slate” charge looks to be just untrue, unless you’re reading “full slate” very narrowly, to include only judicial opinions, and I don’t.
kay
That could be really useful too, depending on how much she revealed in that first process.
It was a long time ago, in political years. I’d be interested in how her views might have changed.
Not that she’ll get any rational questions along those compare-contrast lines. It’ll be all military recruiters on campus, all the time, but that might be a worthwhile, substantive inquiry, if anyone (like a Senator) wanted to try it.
some other guy
Wait, isn’t Goodwin Liu the Shaolin Master Killer?
West of the Cascades
So … Liu has to fill out the forms and do his own searches on YouTube because, what, the Republicans aren’t competent to use Teh Google? Isn’t Sessions’s letter just an admission that “Fail “R” Us”?
Nick
@rikyrah: Liu doesn’t have anymore of a paper trail than Kagan does, the only difference is he said one or two things that make the bullhorns of the echo chambers smile.
burnspbesq
@Citizen_X:
Actually, no.
Pug
Who can ever forget Jeff Sessions (of fucking Alabama no less) during the Sotomayor hearings?
In his best George Wallace accent, “Ah bulieve this heah Potah Riccan woman is racist”.
Bobby Thomson
It’s a shame Liu can’t give this the response it deserves:
“Oh, so let me get this straight. Last Thursday there was a committee vote and every single Republican on the committee voted against me. Now, you, Jeff Sessions, one of the people who voted against me for spurious reasons, is threatening not to support my nomination. The nomination you already voted against. The nomination that never depended on your vote, but instead the votes of all 57 Democrats, the two Independents, and Olympia Snowe. Because I might have talked to show and tell at the local grade school and forgotten to report it. Gotcha.”
Bobby Thomson
Ah, jeez. Didn’t realize this was from over a month ago.
Still stupid, just not as stupid.
Rhoda
@rikyrah: Kagan couldn’t get into the pipeline when Clinton nominated her and Liu is still a 50/50 proposition. The fact is, the court generally pushes rational people to the left. Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito are far right reactionaries and Kennedy is a moderate reactionary (if that makes sense). So, no, I think the way this thing is right now you need someone who won’t make waves but is clearly liberal.
Kagan is a liberal. She’ll move to the left on the court; she can talk with Kennedy and stands a chance of pushing him to the left on some issues. She won’t change the make up of the court.
The time for a supreme court fight is when the 5-4 dynamic can be broken. IMO, until then, it just hands bullets to the right.