President Obama has nominated Merrick Garland, chief judge on the federal DC circuit court of appeals, as a U.S. Supreme Court justice to replace the late Antonin Scalia.

Few would describe Garland a flaming liberal, in the mold of current Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsberg, or former Justice John Paul Stevens. More likely a less flamboyant liberal, but liberal just the same, as his mentor Justice William Brennan, for whom Garland clerked in 1978-79.

Brennan was a champion of the First Amendment, perhaps Garland will follow suit.

Yet Brennan was both the ghostwriter for Justice Blackmun’s majority opinion in Roe v Wade, and as at least one commentator asserts, the author of the three worst liberal SCOTUS opinions ever.

The most notorious was Plyler v Doe in 1982, ruling that children of illegal immigrants have a right to free public education. It is hard not to see Garland’s alignment here to Brennan.

On his own, Garland has gold-plated his liberal credentials by denying the 2nd Amendment, most egregiously voting to rehear a case in which a DC ban on handguns for personal protection was overturned.

Of course Obama & Co will paint Garland as an exceptionally well-qualified moderate jurist, far from an intemperate ideologue.

In turn, Obama is offering a cynical plea bargain daring U.S. Senate Republicans to reject the most reasonable nominee now, risking the prospect that a presumptive president Hillary Clinton will nominate someone far worse, perhaps accompanied by a 2016 elected Democratic U.S. Senate majority.

All the same, there’s no rush for U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee chair Charles Grassley, & Co, to prematurely capitulate.  There’s a lot of electioneering, and plenty of time to cave in between now and November.