When I left the legislature, I applied to become a judge.  I never figured I would make it, because I just can’t keep my mouth shut (and the Governor has to like you before you can become a judge), but the judiciary needs more people who have a right view of what a judge does, a restrained interpreter of the law, not a frustrated legislator.  Chuck Poochigian is just such a person.  I sat next to Chuck on the Senate floor for several years, and in that time, and watching him at work, saw a man of intelligence, hard work, balance, and insight.  He is in my opinion perfect for the job of a judge.  He has the temperament, the experience, the knowledge, and the insight necessary to be not just a good judge, but a great judge.  I was glad to see the Governor appoint him to the appellate court.

And now to read that the Commission on Judicial Nomination Evaluations ranks him not qualified to sit on the bench because he hasn’t practiced law enough?  Outrageous, not just outrageous but comical.  Who do these people think they are?  Are they so biased, so pompous, so narrow minded, or so intimidated by a man of Chuck’s obvious qualifications that they cannot see?  If anything shows what is wrong with the legal profession in general, this is it.  I am ashamed to call myself a lawyer, that such narrow minded people of such obvious bias would be granted positions of influence in that profession.  We are looking at the mindset of those who condemned Socrates to death, who condemned Galileo, those who are so enamored of the status quo that they cannot open their minds to someone with whom they might disagree.  Chuck’s only negative is that he is a conservative, but to these unreconstructed leftists, that is enough.  I cannot say enough about their lack of tolerance, their narrow mindedness, their obvious bias in this evaluation.  It is the worst of the worst.  Chuck is by far their superior in every sense of the word, and they have the gall to render such an opinion.

I would expect that they would evaluate me not qualified.  I am opinionated, and question my own temperament to become a judge.  It is hard for me to keep my mouth shut when I see things with which I disagree.  Chuck is even tempered and intelligent.  I know he knows the law, and he knows the practice.  We talked about those things often in our time in the Senate.  I would expect a bunch of nutball leftists to condemn me, and to use my words and my actions against me in evaluating me.  Chuck has none of my defects in that area.

Sometimes I question my own tactics.  Sometimes I wonder if it would not be better to preserve peace to advance the causes in which I so passionately believe.  Sometimes I think that confrontation is not always the best way to advance the conservative movement.  Should we not allow those with whom we disagree the benefit of the doubt, that they may be misguided, but they are honorable?  Then they do something like this.  There is no honor in the left, no reason to give them any benefit of the doubt.  That they would use this tactic, that is, the tactic of rating such a good and honorable man "not qualified" then releasing that evaluation in violation of their own rules tells me that we have a long and arduous fight on our hands, and that people of honor and good will must confront these types, and attack on all fronts.  They are in this fight to destroy people who think like us.  We must face that fact, and know that we are right in our cause, and not back away from any fight.

What the JNE Commission did was outrageous.  Quite frankly, no Governor should ever listen to them again.  They are not reliable, they are not honorable, they are biased, and they are not entitled to the trust they have been given in the judicial appointment process.  I hope they are completely ignored from this point forward in the judicial process, and that they simply atrophy away in the legal process.  Outrageous, simply outrageous.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.