For the past week, I had been hearing about the pending confirmation vote to take place for Linda Shelton, a Democrat who was appointed as a Commissioner on the Board of Parole Hearings by Governor Schwarzenegger about a year ago. The more I kept hearing, the more I was convinced that while the Governor may have made this appointment in good faith, believing that Shelton would be as tough on criminals as he was, clearly she demonstrated over her first year that she was not. Frankly, the Governor probably should have withdrawn her name from consideration before it came up for a vote, which happened earlier this week.
Frankly, were in not for the hectic schedule that I had due to last weekend’s California Republican Party convention, I would have been writing ahead of the nomination, urging the Governor to pull her name, and short of that, urging Senators concerned about her history of voting to put convicted violent felons out on the streets before their full sentence was served.
Given that liberals control the State Senate (you know the type, the ones who believe that if someone is a criminal, it is because ‘society’ let them down, not because of a lapse in individual responsibility), it was not at all surprising to me that Shelton was confirmed. It also did not surprise me, given what I had been hearing about her, that more than two-thirds of Senate Republicans voted to oppose her confirmation, in addition to Lou Correa, a moderate Democrat from Orange County.
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