At the redoubtable Powerline, Paul Mirengoff observes that Judges Alice Batchelder and Julia Smith Gibbons, the two 6th Circuit jurists in the majority for reversing the terribly reasoned lower court decision of Judge Anna Diggs Taylor (a President Jimmy Carter appointee) invalidating the NSA program, were placed on the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan, and elevated to the Court of Appeals by, respectively, the first and second President Bush.

Judge Ronald Gilman, the dissenter who would have upheld Judge Taylor’s decision killing the program, is an appointee of President Bill Clinton.

Not that elections matter or anything …