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05.04.2011 1

Reject Obama Political Hack’s Judicial Nomination

By Rick Manning

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is going to the mats to promote an attorney who would be the plaintiff’s bars dream, to Federal District Court for the District of Rhode Island. Reid upped the ante by filing for cloture in the Senate forcing at least 41 Senators to block his nomination through the threat of a filibuster.

Obama nominee, John J. “Jack” McConnell, received a low rating from the American Bar Association of “substantial majority qualified, minority unqualified” indicating that there are serious questions about McConnell’s evaluation fitness to serve a lifetime appointment among those who know him best.

To date, McConnell’s 25 years of experience as a personal injury plaintiff’s lawyer is mainly distinguished by intemperate remarks, political campaign contributions to the very Senators who will vote on his nomination, and acting as the state treasurer for the Rhode Island Democratic Party.

The almost $65,000 in contributions to 16 Democrat Senators with another $81,000 to President Obama’s political operation and inaugural committee shows that nominee McConnell knows how to stroke a check to the right people, and further explains his nomination.

What McConnell’s liberal largesse doesn’t explain is why anyone would think he’d be a good judge.

In the past two and a half years, the U.S. Senate has refused to act on McConnell’s nomination twice, returning it to President Obama, only to find this heavy political contributor renominated by the President.

However, political contributions to influential Democratic Senators are also not the reason why Jack McConnell should be rejected by the Senate. McConnell should be rejected because he has publicly wrote in the Providence Journal on Jan. 7, 2005, that he supports an “active government” that should not “stand on the sidelines” when it comes to pursuing his vision of a just result.

Self-described as “…an emotional person about injustice at any level — personal, societal, global,” McConnell believes that “there are wrongs to be righted and that’s how I see the law.” He is exactly the kind of judicial crusader who would relish the power to put himself above the Constitution and the law in order to establish his own vision of justice.

This attitude is perfectly suitable to a private plaintiff’s attorney, but, more than anything else, it shows why McConnell should be rejected by the Senate.

A McConnell court room would rip the blindfold off of Lady Justice and create law based upon the whims of the judge himself. This is a far cry for the fair trials that are the basic precept of our legal system.

The U.S. Senate needs to reject this radical nominee who would put himself above the law, and given Harry Reid’s determination to force a showdown, conduct a filibuster to protect the American concept that justice is blind.

Rick Manning is the Communications Director of Americans for Limited Government. You can follow Rick on Twitter at @RManning957.

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