[Ginny LaRoe]
The Bay Area's two federal bench nominees advanced today from the Senate Judiciary Committee on the expected party-line votes.
Now the fight moves to the full Senate where the confirmations are anything but assured.
President Obama nominated Northern District Magistrate Judge Edward Chen for a judgeship and UC Berkeley law school associate dean Goowdin Liu for a seat on the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein issued an impassioned defense of both today, pointing to Chen’s nine-year history as a magistrate and Liu’s “great mind.”
She urged Republicans to keep in context comments made by Chen after former client Fred Korematsu's funeral that have been portrayed as unpatriotic and to instead look at his record on the bench.
“Here there is judicial experience. It is reasoned. It’s temperate. It’s prudent. It’s everything we want it to be,” she said. “And yet I sit here, and I listen to nine years of expertise as a magistrate judge being slurred.”
As for Liu, she seemed resigned to the fact his nomination would be blocked over speeches Republicans are using against him.
She said he is a “remarkable young man ... and yet this speech or that speech is essentially likely to kill his candidacy, and I just think that is wrong,” the senator said.
“And I sense that the other side of the aisle has made some compact, or some decision that no matter what they are going to be negative on these judges,” she added.
Comments