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September 08, 2006BELTWAY BLOGROLL
Sen. Santorum Quotes Bloggers
When the Senate on Tuesday debated the nomination of Kimberly Ann Moore to be a U.S. circuit judge for the Federal Circuit, Sen. Rick Santorum seized that as an opportunity both to tout Moore's candidacy but also to decry "activist" judges who are not in her mold.
In making the case against activist judges, Santorum, R-Pa., cited the recent decision by U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Michigan against an anti-terrorism surveillance program. And in bashing Taylor in particular, he appealed in part to the opinions of two prominent legal bloggers.
Here is an excerpt from Santorum's statement in the Congressional Record:
Howard Bashman, an appellate attorney and editor of the How Appealing legal blog, wrote in The New York Times on August 19 that "[i]t does appear that folks on all sides of the spectrum, both those who support it and those who oppose it, say the decision is not strongly grounded in legal authority."UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh wrote on his widely read blog: "the judge's opinion ... seems not just ill-reasoned but rhetorically ill-conceived. ... [B]y writing an opinion that was too much feeling and too little careful argument, the judge in this case made it less likely that the legal approach she feels so strongly about will ultimately become law.
Santorum appears to be the first federal lawmaker to specifically cite bloggers during floor debate. Blogs have been mentioned generically on the floor, but I don't recall anyone having quoted them before now.
As for Moore, she was confirmed 92-0, with eight senators not voting. Curiously, Santorum was one of the eight who didn't vote. A statement in the Record listed him as being "necessarily absent" during the vote.
UPDATE: A spokesman for Santorum just confirmed what I suspected -- that the senator just submitted his statement for the Record but did not actually quote blogs from the floor. So while it's not quite the first that I first thought, it's still interesting.
Posted by Danny | 12:38 PM
