Every now and again, we drop by to see how the wingnut takeover of the federal judiciary is proceeding. Our latest episode concerns Allison Jones Rushing, who's one step away from a lifetime appointment to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. (The Senate just confirmed her on Tuesday afternoon.) Rushing presently is in private practice, but she's been nurtured since law school in the carefully manicured terrarium of the conservative legal community.

Federalist Society member? Check. Clerkships for current conservative Supreme Court justices? Check (Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch). Wingnut culture-war bona fides? Check.

The Rushing-Lorence article criticizes and demeans those who seek to enforce the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, arguing that the Court’s standing jurisprudence “provide[s] a loophole for every village secularist to charge into court with the ACLU and challenge governmental acknowledgements of religion, no matter how passive or benign. These delicate plaintiffs with eggshell sensitivities— who claim deep offense at the acknowledgement of any beliefs that conflict with their own—then seek court orders censoring the religious message, as a type of ‘heckler’s veto.’

And here's the real peril in this nomination: Allison Jones Rushing is 37-years old. All things being equal, she could sit on that court until 2059. And then there's Kenneth Lee, a nominee for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the current administration*'s principal bete noire. From Bloomberg Law:

Lee, whose nomination was formally sent to the Senate last week, wrote that Asian Americans were “caught between” affirmative action “policies that limit their admission to select colleges and opportunistic conservatives” trying to “woo the Angry Yellow Male vote,” in Angry Yellow Men, a 1996 New Republic piece written while a student at Cornell University. [Ed. Note: I can't say I miss the old New Republic as much as many people do.] After law school, the nominee advised Republicans to “appropriate the language and logic of liberals’ most sacred shibboleth: affirmative action,” in order to obtain better representation of Republicans and Christian conservatives at universities, in a 2002 article in The American Enterprise. Lee, who has been tapped for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit based in California, also wrote in favor of denying felons voting rights and critiqued U.S. immigration policy.

Lee is 43.

I remember being told in 2016 that making the argument for Hillary Rodham Clinton on the basis of keeping any Republican president away from the federal judiciary was tantamount to blackmail. Interestingly, the refutation to this nonsense will take place in real time over the next four decades.

Jesus, these people.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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