BE forewarned: Democrats hope to turn “Federalist Society” into two of the dirtiest words in American politics. They will use this phrase to distort the records of judicial nominees, in a concerted effort to derail their nominations.
They’ve been getting some practice at the state level. In a bitter battle for control of Michigan’s highest court last fall, Democrats targeted three incumbent Republican judges for defeat. Prominent in the Democratic campaign was the charge that the judges’ affiliation with the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, a powerful “cabal” of conservative lawyers, made them unfit for the bench. One of the combatants, columnist Trevor Coleman of the Detroit Free Press, warned last month that the Federalist Society’s influence reaches well beyond Michigan: “After eight years of being the proverbial barbarians at the gate during the Clinton administration, the Federalist Society has finally broken through and taken control of the village.”
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