Rather than completely reprint my post on Virginia Bloggers Against Mike Huckabee, I thought I’d just give the highlights. – namely this: if you worry about an out-of-control judiciary running roughsod over the Constitution, Mike Huckabee is not the candidate for you.
Here’s Mike Huckabee (who claims to want judges with a “a strict constructionist view of their job”) on 8th Circuit Appeals Court Judge Lavenski Smith: “An outstanding young jurist . . . that I’ve known since I was in grade school. And he’s a person that embodies the kind of person we need on the bench.”
Here’s Hans Bader (Counsel for Special Projects for the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute) on Smith:
Lavenski Smith has turned out to be ever-so- slightly left-of-center on the Eighth Circuit, left of that Circuit’s center on race discrimination claims, and willing to uphold some restrictions on anti-abortion signs (that latter fact is surprising given his pre-judicial litigation work with the Rutherford Institute). Despite his once conservative background, he now seems to be a moderate with some liberal tendencies.
Somebody’s clearly missing the mark, here, and I don’t think it’s Bader.
