In an evident effort to generate sympathy for controversial Ninth Circuit nominee Goodwin Liu, the print edition of today’s Washington Post accompanied its article on yesterday’s cloture vote with a picture of Liu playing with his three-year-old daughter. Caption: “Court of Appeals nominee Goodwin Liu entertains daughter Violet, 3, while waiting to testify at an April 16 confirmation hearing.” How, the reader presumably is to ask, could Republicans oppose such a man?

[One reader asks whether the Liu photo is any different than the photos papers ran of John Roberts’s son at his nomination announcement. One obvious difference is that the photos of Roberts’s son related to the very event that was being reported. It would be far easier to understand a photo of Liu and his daughter accompanying an article about his hearing. (Indeed, I dimly recall that the Post ran that same photo at that time.)]

Further, the article, headlined (in the print edition) “Republicans foil Obama nominee for appeals court,” nowhere points out that Democrat Ben Nelson was one of the votes against cloture. That fact, after all, would complicate its narrative. Nor does it reveal to readers, many of whom live in Virginia, that Democrat Jim Webb of Virginia has said that he would vote against Liu’s confirmation on the merits. (The article also suggests the sloppy charge of hypocrisy, though it is more evenhanded on that score than Dahlia Lithwick’s piece.)