If you were expecting the Senate Judiciary Committee to take up a string of dull, well-vetted Biglaw partners when it announced that it would push forward with hearings on judicial nominees despite the fact that the Senate itself is in recess, you haven’t been paying attention. No, holding unprecedented hearings despite releasing all the minority party’s Senators is when the GOP will ramrod through its most jaw-droppingly crazy nominees — right when Mazie Hirono is 5000 miles away.

As judicial nominations expert Professor Carl Tobias put it, “the whole notion of regular order has been completely destroyed.” Which is unfortunate because, as Tobias points out, these hearings make it appear as if the GOP is trying to covertly slide controversial nominees through. As it turns out, that’s not just the optics — Republicans are actually trying to slide controversial nominees through. It doesn’t seem as though they’d need to upset norms when they enjoy a Senate majority and no filibuster mechanism, but as they learned with the Ryan Bounds nomination, a healthy hearing process can still derail a conservative judicial nominee. The solution, obviously, is to functionally eliminate the hearing process!

Today, with nary a Democrat in sight, the Judiciary Committee will be rushing to judgment quite literally, as the committee will take up the Fourth Circuit nomination of Allison Rushing, the stumbling toddler of a judicial nominee who only graduated law school in 2007 and hasn’t even been a lawyer long enough to meet the ABA’s already lax 12-year practice minimum for judicial nominees. When you consider that a quarter of her career was spent clerking, you’re faced with the reality that the committee is about to fast-track a woman into a circuit court seat who’s only really practiced for a handful of years. The ABA hasn’t even issued a rating on her yet, and the Judiciary Committee is pushing up her confirmation process in a naked attempt to get it all sewn up before the ABA releases what’s almost assuredly going to be yet another scathing “Not Qualified” rating for the gang of nitwits and bloggers that Trump’s being installing on the appellate bench. Hey, at least the blogger got a passing ABA rating — what used to be a floor is now high praise. UPDATE: The ABA has actually given her the “Qualified” rating! I guess the curve has been broken that badly.

Hell, she’s not even practiced in North Carolina or passed the North Carolina bar, despite being nominated for a North Carolina vacancy. Len Leo just pulled the name of the youngest right-wing activist out a hat and told her that she should start shopping for a new house.

When she was nominated in August, we focused on this troubling lack of experience. Somehow this whole affair has somehow managed to get even worse since then.

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, headed by former DOJ Civil Rights Division boss Vanita Gupta, drafted a letter opposing the nomination revealing that Rushing used to work for the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is, you know, a defined hate group. Super!

Rushing only worked with the ADF for a summer during law school, but that’s actually a significant part of her whole legal career at this point. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the ADF “is a legal advocacy and training group that has supported the recriminalization of homosexuality in the U.S. and criminalization abroad; has defended state-sanctioned sterilization of trans people abroad; has linked homosexuality to pedophilia and claims that a ‘homosexual agenda’ will destroy Christianity and society.” As Gupta’s letter points out, even if one is inclined to discount law school experiences, the fact that Rushing sought out this group to work for is “deeply disturbing” in itself. It’s not like it’s easy to pick up a gig with bigotry groups at a law school career fair. OK, I guess you can find jobs with the current DOJ at a career fair, but you get what I mean.

UPDATE: And Rushing’s connections with ADF actually go deeper than one summer. Her financial disclosure form reveals that she accepted a $1750 honorarium from ADF just last year.

These serious concerns over Rushing’s nomination underscore the importance of a thorough hearing. Instead, we got…

Yes, a whopping two Republican Senators lobbing softballs. Rushing’s hearing was over in less than an hour.

Democracy in action.

(Check out the full on the next page…)

Earlier: Trump’s Latest Circuit Nominee Graduated Law School In 2007

GOP Advancing Judicial Nominations While Senate In Recess Because… Why Not?

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.