Justice Brown’s bum rap

Nat Hentoff, on old-time civil libertarian (staunch and principled) shows how Senate Democrats are distorting the record of Janice Rogers Brown, the latest of President Bush’s judicial nominees to be blocked. Hentoff cites a series of opinions by Brown, in her capacity as a member of the California Supreme Court, that give the lie to Ted Kennedy’s lazy claim that Brown has “a deep-seated and disturbing hostility to civil rights, workers’ rights, consumer protection and government action.” Indeed, Hentoff’s description of Brown’s opinion in a 2002 racial profiling cases sounds like it should disturb me more than it should disturb Senator Kennedy, if he actually cared about the merits and didn’t simply take his orders from left-wing special interest groups.