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Believing that all the applicants were qualified, but able to hire only a few, this person recommended rejecting each member of the Federalist Society.

I could not approach being nearly as eloquent as Georgetown law professor Louis Michael Seidman in an on-line debate over at the Federalist Society.Believe me, this guy is as liberal as they come. He not only defended SS's statements about being empathetic and being a wise Latina but also the irrelevancy of not being able to find a single case in which partial-birth abortion was medically necessary.But at least the guy is calling this nomination procedure like he sees it. On July 14 he wrote:"...I was completely disgusted by Judge Sotomayor's testimony today. If she was not perjuring herself, she is intellectually unqualified to be on the Supreme...

Senator John McCain I believe that one of the greatest threats to our liberty and the Constitutional framework that safeguards our freedoms are willful judges who usurp the role of the people and their representatives and legislate from the bench. As President, I will nominate judges who understand that their role is to faithfully apply the law as written, not impose their opinions through judicial fiat. We are a free people. This means that the rules we have agreed to live by are those made by the people themselves, not a small elite that claims to be wiser than everybody...

Steven Calabresi, Professor of Law at Northwestern University (http://www.law.northwestern.edu/faculty/fulltime/Calabresi/Calabresi.html) and co-founder of the premiere conservative legal organization, The Federalist Society, who previously backed Rudy has now endorsed John McCain. In an e-mail to me he explained: I have endorsed Senator McCain and think he would be an excellent president because he is tough on foreign policy, committed to spending restraint which is the key to small government, and because he has consistently voted for good judicial nominees in tough fights like Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. I am not troubled by his role as a member of the gang of...

That’s the verdict rendered in this article. It’s just another example of the case conservatives should be making on Fred’s behalf. Here’s one of the key sections of the article: In short, Thompson holds the same conservative positions of all the other candidates combined, and has none of their flaws. In fact, any close observer of the campaign season would tell you that Thompson has been on the receiving end of barely any substantive attacks on policy issues. This is no coincidence. And it is the reason he has had to bear the brunt of shallow attacks about his demeanor,...

WASHINGTON - Presidential contender Rudy Giuliani has been winning over some conservative Republicans by promising to appoint judges in the mold of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and others who might seem likely to limit the reach of the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. Judges he named as New York mayor, however, could never be mistaken for Scalia. Giuliani's promise has helped overcome his abortion rights support as an issue for conservative voters. After all, the next president can do little about abortion except to name judges who interpret the law more strictly. As a result, some prominent conservatives,...

If the GOP primary electorate were composed entirely of members of the Federalist Society, Rudy Giuliani would be the heavy favorite. Last Friday his opponents gave him an uncontested day before this conservative lawyers group celebrating their 25th anniversary. A number of the leaders and founders of this esteemed organization including Steven Calabresi and Ted Olson make up his judicial advisory board (by Giuliani’s count no less than seven of his judicial supporters spoke at the three day conference) so it should have come as no shock that he was warmly greeted, interrupted frequently by applause and left to a...

(AP) Rudy Giuliani assured a conservative legal group Friday that if elected president he would appoint federal judges who adhere to their principles. He also praised a judge who declared the capital city's gun ban unconstitutional and ridiculed efforts to eliminate the words "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance. In a speech marking the 25th anniversary of the Federalist Society, Giuliani spelled out a conservative legal agenda in which he cited Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts as models for the judges he would appoint to the federal bench.

Conservative Legal Group Focuses on Judiciary to Come Election? What election? The pinstriped tribe of conservative legal minds called the Federalist Society -- more than 1,000 of whom gathered at the Mayflower Hotel this week -- is playing a much longer strategic game. Yesterday they had Sen. Arlen Specter at breakfast, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff before lunch and Vice President Cheney at cocktail hour. The message: full speed ahead with the movement. "Some people now have taken up the idea that, really, the Federalist Society is kind of like a modern-day da Vinci conspiracy, a secret society that controls...

Speech is scheduled for 45 minutes, according to C-span's website. This will be the Veep's first major speech since the election. It will no doubt be interesting to hear his take on what the upcoming Dem control of Congress means for the administration's Iraq policy.

Professor Robert P. George is pacing around a Princeton auditorium before 200-plus undergraduates, preparing to wage an intellectual shock-and-awe campaign against illogical thinking. “Some politicians say that they’re ‘personally opposed’ to abortion, yet ‘pro-choice,’” says the 48-year-old professor of constitutional law and moral philosophy. “But we must ask: Is this a position that can survive the test of logical coherence? After all, if abortion is wrong, surely it is wrong because it is the unjust taking of the life of a developing human being.” He pauses to let that sink in and then launches another question: “And if one believes...

WASHINGTON - The American Bar Association rated one of President Bush's judicial nominees "not qualified" Wednesday, prompting a call from a liberal group for the president to withdraw the Mississippi lawyer's nomination. A panel of the nation's largest lawyers group unanimously agreed that Michael Wallace, nominated for the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, should receive its lowest rating. Wallace, 54, was a law clerk to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and special counsel to then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi during the impeachment trial of President Clinton in 1999.

Scalia Says Opponents Are 'Idiots' By JONATHAN EWING, Associated Press Writer 10 minutes ago People who believe the Constitution would break if it didn't change with society are "idiots," U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says. In a speech Monday sponsored by the conservative Federalist Society, Scalia defended his long-held belief in sticking to the plain text of the Constitution "as it was originally written and intended." "Scalia does have a philosophy, it's called originalism," he said. "That's what prevents him from doing the things he would like to do," he told more than 100 politicians and lawyers from this...

There's no shortage of historic and gripping Supreme Court stories for journalists to report on these days. Why, then, does ABC News' "Nightline" care where Associate Justice Antonin Scalia was the night Chief Justice John Roberts was sworn in? It cares because it mistakenly thinks it has caught him in a "judicial junket." Last Monday, ABC News ran an "investigative" story centering on the fact that Justice Scalia was absent the night of the Sept. 29 Roberts ceremony, the only justice to miss it. Where was he? Turns out -- horror of horrors -- that the former law professor had...

Last February, as rumors swirled about the failing health of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, a team of conservative grass-roots organizers, public relations specialists and legal strategists met to prepare a battle plan to ensure any vacancies were filled by like-minded jurists. The team recruited conservative lawyers to study the records of 18 potential nominees — including Judges John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr. — and trained more than three dozen lawyers across the country to respond to news reports on the president's eventual pick. "We boxed them in," one lawyer present during the strategy meetings said...

Conservatives See Court Shift as Culmination By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK In February of last year, as rumors swirled about the failing health of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, a team of conservative grass-roots organizers, public relations specialists and legal strategists met to prepare a battle plan for whomever the next Supreme Court nominee might be. The leaders were Leonard A. Leo, executive vice president of the Federalist Society and informal adviser to the White House; Edwin Meese III, attorney general in the Reagan administration; and C. Boyden Gray, the White House counsel under the first President Bush and a veteran...

The Federalist Society has sent a letter to ABC Nightline where they demand that ABC News investigate the producer, reporter, and anchor in their report on Jan 23rd, 2006 where they accuse Supreme Court Justice Antione Scalia of violating judicial ethics laws in attending a Federalist Society CLE Course instead of watching Chief Justice Robert's swearing in ceremony. Here is the Letter from The Federalist Society: Mr. David Westin President ABC News 7 West 66th Street New York, NY 10023 Dear Mr. Westin: I write to express my deep disappointment and concern about a January 23rd report aired on ABC's...

Lawyers at the Federalist Society are drafting a letter to ABC News President David Westin calling for an internal investigation of two ABC News journalists responsible for a “Nightline” segment that accused Justice Antonin Scalia of ethical lapses, a source close to the conservative legal group tells HUMAN EVENTS.ABC News Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross reported Monday for ABC’s “Nightline” that Scalia was out of town at a Federalist Society legal seminar on the day of Chief Justice John Roberts’ swearing-in ceremony. Ross’ report showed Scalia playing tennis at the hotel where he stayed—video that might have been obtained illegally,...

More on ABC's Breathtaking Scoop [Ed Whelan  01/24 06:00 PM] From a reader who took part in the seminar that Justice Scalia led:“I was fortunate enough to have a first-seat view of the famous Beaver Creek conference that ABC is making much about. . . . As I recall, the timing of Roberts's confirmation vote and swearing in were up in the air to the last minute. . . . As I recall, he was sworn in within 3 hours of the vote, and it was announced as a surprise at the conference. Scalia even mildly chuckled from the podium...

Federalist Society Slams ABC's Scalia Story: Repeat of Rather-Mapes by Robert B. Bluey Posted Jan 24, 2006 The conservative Federalist Society, the centerpiece of an ABC News story questioning Justice Antonin Scalia’s ethics, today compared the network’s reporting on the story to the infamous Dan Rather and Mary Mapes episode regarding President Bush’s National Guard records. ABC News Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross reported Monday for ABC’s “Nightline” that Scalia was out of town at a Federalist Society legal seminar on Sept. 29, 2005—the day of Chief Justice John Roberts’ swearing-in ceremony. The piece contains video footage of Scalia on...