Federal circuit could be revolutionized under Obama
Reason #150,672 to vote against Obama: The chances are very good that he will be able to appoint liberal judges not just to the Supreme Court, but he could bring a leftist majority to almost every federal circuit court in the nation:
Federalist Society founder Steven Calabresi in the Wall Street Journal:
We know about the Surpreme Court and the potential for Obamamischief there; 6 of the 9 justices will be at least 70 years old on inauguration day. And if the Democrats are able to win 9 seats in the Senate, that will destory any hopes of stopping Obama from packing the courts with young, idealistic, far left judges who will seek to make his dream of wealth distribution via the courts a reality.Consider the most important lower federal court in the country: the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In his two terms as president, Ronald Reagan appointed eight judges, an average of one a year, to this court. They included Robert Bork, Antonin Scalia, Kenneth Starr, Larry Silberman, Stephen Williams, James Buckley, Douglas Ginsburg and David Sentelle. In his two terms, George W. Bush was able to name only four: John Roberts, Janice Rogers Brown, Thomas Griffith and Brett Kavanaugh.
Although two seats on this court are vacant, Bush nominee Peter Keisler has been denied even a committee vote for two years. If Barack Obama wins the presidency, he will almost certainly fill those two vacant seats, the seats of two older Clinton appointees who will retire, and most likely the seats of four older Reagan and George H.W. Bush appointees who may retire as well.
The net result is that the legal left will once again have a majority on the nation's most important regulatory court of appeals.
The balance will shift as well on almost all of the 12 other federal appeals courts. Nine of the 13 will probably swing to the left if Mr. Obama is elected (not counting the Ninth Circuit, which the left solidly controls today). Circuit majorities are likely at stake in this presidential election for the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eleventh Circuit Courts of Appeal. That includes the federal appeals courts for New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and virtually every other major center of finance in the country.
Barack Obama: Change you can have your wallet picked for.