The next time I hear some lefty mooing about the president's having let down the side on something or another, it better be about something of substance, like the Keystone XL pipeline, or I'm going to boot said lefty's hindquarters in the general direction of the federal appeals court of the District Of Columbia, which today laid down the most singular piece of partisan hackery to come out of a court since Antonin Scalia picked the previous president. For precise legal analysis, I'll leave it to Scott at LG&Mto explain. This, children, is what you get when you operate politically under the theory that They're All The Same. You get 20 or 30 years of primarily Republican judges acting primarily as Republicans, drawn from the legal chop-shops in the conservative movement bubble, and doing their partisan duty like performing seals.

David Sentelle would the the one in the center ring with the ball on his nose. As the Center For American Progress points out, this is career Tenther who believes the Constitution as written on a napkinat a Chamber of Commerce luncheon. Small wonder he went batty on people appointed to the NLRB. This is a guy who thinks the NLRB itself is constitutionally illegitimate. It is not an accident that Sentelle's decision is directed at appointees to the regulatory agencies. He doesn't think the agencies should exist.

But Sentelle's career as a Republican hack goes back longer than that. For starters, he was instrumental in hamstringing Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh's efforts to bring the Reagan Administration to account. He stepped in for the judge who was presiding over the special prosecutor's office when the special prosecutor started indicting some of William Rehnquist's dinner guests.

In his book Firewall, Walsh called those judges "a powerful band of Republican appointees [who] waited like the strategic reserves of an embattled army." A leader of this partisan faction was Judge Laurence H. Silberman, an obstreperous conservative. Silberman had served as a foreign policy advisor to Reagan's 1980 campaign and took part in a controversial meeting with an Iranian emissary behind President Carter's back during the Iran-hostage crisis. At one point during the Iran-contra scandal, Silberman berated MacKinnon. "At a D.C. circuit conference, he [Silberman] had gotten into a shouting match about independent counsel with Judge George MacKinnon," Walsh wrote. "Silberman not only had hostile views but seemed to hold them in anger." On the North appeal in 1990, Silberman teamed up with Sentelle to overturn North's convictions. Sentelle also served on a second three-judge panel that threw out Poindexter's convictions. Despite the North-Poindexter setbacks, Walsh kept digging. By 1991, his investigators had discovered hidden documents revealing an elaborate Iran-contra cover-up. In effect, Walsh learned that North had told the truth when he claimed to be the "fall guy" for the scandal. In 1992, Walsh confronted former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger with evidence of his role in the cover-up. When Weinberger refused to admit he had lied about his knowledge of Reagan's Iran-contra decisions, Walsh indicted Weinberger on perjury and obstruction charges. The Weinberger indictment touched off a conservative firestorm against Walsh and, less visibly, against his protector, Judge MacKinnon. Walsh's breakthrough on the cover-up threatened to tarnish Reagan's legacy and complicated President Bush's re-election strategies in 1992. Rehnquist, a conservative Republican who had been elevated to the chief justice spot by Reagan, moved to replace MacKinnon. In an interview, Walsh told me that he received a call from MacKinnon sometime in early 1992 with the news that Rehnquist was easing MacKinnon out and bringing Sentelle in. "He [MacKinnon] was giving me a heads up," Walsh said, adding that it was clear that MacKinnon would have liked to continue in the post. "He really loved that job," Walsh said.

And, again, alas, we must return to the Golden Era Of Beltway Crazee — the 1990s, and the pursuit of Bill Clinton and, eventually, of his penis. Sentelle, who was promoted in politics by the late pathogen, Jesse Helms, was still the judge who was overseeing the Whitewater special prosecutor's office, and he was instrumental in shuffling the original occupant of that office, Robert Fiske, who was preparing to chuck the whole Whitewater scandal as so much malarkey, in favor of the bedsniffin' yahoo, Ken Starr, and we know what ensued thereafter. To say Sentelle was involved is to understate things considerably.

Criticism of the appointment of Kenneth W. Starr as the Whitewater independent prosecutor intensified into a partisan furor today as Democratic senators demanded a public accounting of Mr. Starr's recent political activities and challenged the impartiality of the head of the three-judge panel that picked him. Some senators expressed shock at the news that Judge David B. Sentelle, the head of the three-judge appellate panel that named Mr. Starr, had lunch on July 14 with Senator Lauch Faircloth, a conservative Republican of North Carolina, while the panel was still considering its choice. Mr. Faircloth was a leader of efforts to oust Robert B. Fiske Jr. as the Whitewater prosecutor.

(Say what you will about John Edwards, and everyone does, but at least he rid the Senate of Lauch Faircloth.)

Three decades of this, and what you get are decisions like the one that was handed down today. Tell me again how it never mattered.

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

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io