screengrab from https://youtu.be/bOyLKNNq4bo

I posted just a short while ago on a slate of thirty-five nominees to federal appeals and district courts that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has vowed to push through the Senate after the November 6 election. One of those is Allison Rushing who is slated to join the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Rushing is 36 years old, she is a partner at the powerhouse law firm of Williams & Connolly. But she’s an out and proud social conservative and so she has become the target of the left:

Ms. Rushing is drawing protests from liberal advocacy groups who say her résumé is too thin for an appeals court nominee. She clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas and Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, before he became a Supreme Court justice, but is only 11 years out of law school and has never been a judge. If confirmed, she would become the youngest nominee to take the federal bench in more than 15 years.

Allison Rushing is affiliated with notoriously extremist anti-#LGBTQ org, the Alliance Defending Freedom.@realDonaldTrump just nominated her to a lifetime judgeship. What could possibly go wrong? https://t.co/7PLhE0zOFi — Lambda Legal (@LambdaLegal) October 16, 2018

NEW: @civilrightsorg opposes 4th Circuit nominee Allison Rushing – an ideological extremist who is in her mid-30s and has never practiced law in NC. Her hearing is tomorrow while senators are home on recess & the ABA hasn't rated her yet. Read my letter: https://t.co/WA18U2KHl3 pic.twitter.com/pR4ry80LY7 — Vanita Gupta (@vanitaguptaCR) October 16, 2018

The claim of lack of experience has been undercut by the left-leaning (actually hard-left but I’m turning over a new leaf in my views of weaponized progressive organizations) American Bar Association giving her a “Qualified” rating:

Fourth Circuit nominee Allison Jones Rushing, who has a confirmation hearing today, has been rated "Qualified" but not "Well Qualified" by the ABA #AppellateTwitter — Patrick Gregory (@PatrickGregry) October 17, 2018

And her partners speak highly of her (this is scarily like #17 on this list)

No fewer than 105 Williams & Connolly partners have signed this letter of support for Allison Rushing; "we are in unanimous agreement that Allison will be a superb member of the federal judiciary." https://t.co/kFr6v10nhi — Kannon Shanmugam (@KannonShanmugam) October 17, 2018

So now they are launching a new attack accusing Rushing of being affiliated with a “hate group.” Circuit Court Nominee Worked For Hate Group — Good Thing We’re Not Going To Have A Real Hearing On This One!

The angst in the article is driven by the fact that the Democrats decided to ignore the hearing where Rushton testified. Supposedly, at least according to the reasoning of the Nimrod writing the article, the Democrats failing to show up renders the whole process improper.

But on the meat of the argument:

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.

While this article is more slobbering and bug-eyed than most, the same theme appears over and over. Rushing is accused of working for a “hate group.” The “hate group” appellation is rationalized by the nutters at Southern Poverty Law Center not liking ADF’s views and issuing an anathema against them. This, by the way, is pretty much the way that SPLC controls content on YouTube.

There are a couple of lessons here. First and foremost, is that, while we can, we need to unleash the federal government on the SPLC. At a minimum, it should become a disciplinary offense to overtly or covertly consult with the SPLC on any matter. And we need to sic the FCC on Google and Facebook and Twitter for their use of SPLC as a consulting organization. If they want to be a publisher under the Communications Decency Act, I don’t have a problem with that. But we shouldn’t allow them to behave like a publisher while declaring that they have the indemnity of a platform. The second point is the danger of negotiating with ourselves. We aren’t dealing with a rational opposition, we are dealing with a rabid, wounded beast that sees its lair being destroyed. There were people on our side who were seriously saying that we should throw Brett Kavanaugh under the bus and nominate someone the Democrats like. This was and is wishcasting and self-defeating. Rushing is an admirable candidate and yet she’s being smeared as working for a “hate group” on the strength of her being a social conservative and having the temerity to fight for her views. As long as we have the votes we need to confirm judges we want and if they don’t like it they can either change the way they operate or, if they wish, the can go roger themselves.

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