Roman Hruska Reborn

In the Nixon era the two senators from Nebraska were Roman Hruska and Carl Curtis. Neither was given much credit for having brains. They were reflexive conservatives. When Nixon tried to appoint the notoriously unqualified G. Harold Carswell to the Supreme Court and the ABA refused to give him a qualified rating, Hruska defended the nominee with the phrase "of course he is mediocre but those people need a representative on the court too. " The joke at the time on the floor of the senate was "Which state has a senator who is dumber than (fill in one name of the two)?"

Well here comes Diane Feinstein, evidently running for re-election and worrried about the left (Cindy Sheehan has said she will run against DiFi) and declares she will support the filibuster against Judge Alito. In her statement on why she was opposing the nominee she made the following statement - "It’s a very different day and time than when Justice Ginsburg and Justice Breyer were before this Committee. There was not the polarization within America that is there today and not the defined move to take this Court in a singular direction." Indeed that is true. When Ginsburg and Breyer were considered they were considered on their legal background and demeanor. They both got huge votes for even though many members of the Senate knew what kind of justices they would be. But DiFi seems to think that it is ok to trash a nominee simply because of a disagreement in philosophy. Were the two nominees of Clinton moving the court to the left? Undoubtedly so.

It should be an embarassment that California's two senators now hold the title once owned by Hruska and Curtis - they are knee jerk to the left in the same way that the Nebraskans were knee jerk to the right. California deserves better.