TNR’s Clay Risen penned this little hit piece against Bush judicial nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Alas, it is filled with picayune errors. For instance, Risen says 11th Circuit judge William Pryor “refused to take his daughters to Disney World because of its gay-friendly employment policies.” Wrong. Pryor decided not to take his young daughters to Disney during “Gay Days” (as K-Lo reported here) — that’s quite a difference. Risen characterizes Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen as “a nominee to the Fourth Circuit who has repeatedly spoken out against Roe v. Wade.” Wrong (twice). Owen was nominated to the Fifth Circuit, and the primary complaint was that she adopted a narrow reading of parental notification laws for abortion, not that she ever said anything about Roe (see, e.g., here).

Risen’s charge against Kavanugh is that he is too political — and that this makes him worse than an ideologue. In Risen’s world, it’s okay to have worked for an ideological organization, tirelessly promoting a given legal persepctive (irrespective of its grounding in text or precedent), but heaven forbid one has worked for partisan clients or Ken Starr. The idea that someone active in partisan politics is unqualified for the appellate bench would be quite a new standard. For instance, President Carter appointed former Congressman Abner Mikva to the D.C. Circuit. Senator Schumer claims Kavanugh has too little experience; Risen claims Kavanaugh has too much, of the wrong kind.

One has come to expect errors, misstatements, and novel standards for confirmation in attacks on Bush judicial nominees, but one does not usually expect to find them in TNR.