Washington Post: Southwick is Qualified
By AndrewHyman Posted in Southwick — Comments (2) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
WaPo has an editorial today endorsing confirmation of Judge Southwick. That conclusion is sound, though some of the reasoning is a bit wacky. For example, the Post has decided that everyone who is non-white is African-American:
Only 1 of 19 sitting judges on the 5th Circuit is African American, even though the three states forming that federal appeals court -- Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi -- have between 30 percent and 40 percent non-white residents, according to the 2000 Census.
The Post also gets many of the details wrong about the Richmond case. As previously discussed here at confirmthem, the Mississippi Supreme Court sent the case back to an appeals board instead of to the employing agency, in order for the appeals board to decide whether the employee should suffer some consequences for the offensive remark. The Post seems to think that the Mississippi Supreme Court decided that issue of whether there should be consequences. Judge Southwick would have returned that issue to the employing agency. Anyway, I suppose the Post's editorial is better than nothing.
Hat Tip: Bench Memos.
so what?
by Matthew Friendly
Does it really make a difference? The LA Times came out in favor of Keisler last year (or early this year), and it didn't make any difference.
I am a little suspicious of the WaPo endorsement. It sounds a lot like they realize that there is little that can be done to stop Southwick's confirmation, so they are going to spin it in a way that makes them sound reasonable. In general, though, I think the WaPo has been much more reasonable about Bush's judicial nominees than the NYTimes.