Like Jon and John Fund, I wish Sen. Kyl would back away from this. At Powerline, Paul Mirengoff also has an excellent post on this.

Isn’t there something just a tad precious about the Bridge-to-Nowhere crowd instructing judges on how to be ethical? We trust our lawmakers to discuss legislation with all kinds of people and entities who invest in their campaigns. Why do we think judges can’t be trusted to sort out the same sorts of conflicts? In my experience, judges as a class are scrupulously ethical — there are horror stories, but the reason they are horror stories is they are so obviously a departure from the norm.

We want judges to be getting the kind of education/exposure they can be getting and giving outside the stifling, lefty orbit of government and bar associations. If you’re worried about the money (and we are talking chump-change here), beef up public disclosure mandates. But don’t cut the judges off from the outside world. That’s just idiotic. It’s not like they’re going to go to fewer conferences; they’ll just no longer go to conferences where they might have contact with thinkers — like, you know, conservatives — outside the legal establishment.

And if this is supposed to be some high-minded quid pro quo for giving the judges a raise, that is equally stupid. As lawyers go, judges are poorly paid, even allowing for the fact that they have lots of other perks and influence. The raise they’re getting is a comparative trifle — collectively, it’s like a rounding error in some of today’s class-action settlements. Give ‘em the money, make their outside activities transparent, and move on to something of actual consequence — like, say, building the long-promised border fence.