President Trump has nominated Wendy Vitter to a federal judgeship. She has the backing of both Louisiana Senators and is highly likely to be confirmed. Nevertheless
Vice points out something that might have been a stumbling block for her if Democrats played this game by the same rules as Republicans. A number of President Obama's judicial nominees were stalled or denied outright for exactly this sort of thing.
Wendy Vitter, who was nominated
in January to serve as a federal judge on the U.S. District Court for
the Eastern District of Louisiana, left at least three speeches, one
interview, a letter to the editor, and a campaign ad off the questionnaire she submitted to the committee (not all were related to abortion).
Nominees
to the federal bench are required to tell the committee about every
speech and interview they’ve ever given, and about every article they’ve
written, so senators can evaluate whether they’re fit to serve as
judges.
Again, were this a Democratic nominee, this might actually cause a problem. But since Democrats are more interested in norms and "civility" than they are in leveraging the process to any substantive political advantage, they aren't likely to jam up a judicial candidate just because she left a few things off of her application. Not even a candidate as odious as Vitter.
According to a YouTube video posted in November 2013,
Vitter led a panel entitled “Abortion Hurts Women's Health” at a Right
to Life Louisiana event. One of the panel’s speakers was the
anti-abortion activist Angela Lanfranchi, who told attendees that
abortion increases women’s risk for breast cancer — despite the fact
that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has found no causal link between abortion and a woman’s risk for breast cancer.
In the video, Lanfranchi also encouraged panel attendees to take at look at her brochure entitled “The Pill Kills.” That brochure
claims women on the contraceptive pill are more likely to die a violent
death, because they are more likely to cheat on their male partners, to
face fertility problems, to have unhealthy children, and to have poor
relationships with their partners. The brochure concludes, “It is not
unreasonable to suspect that such effects could also influence rates of
intimate partner violence.”
After Lanfranchi spoke, however, Vitter told attendees to pick up one of her brochures.
Anyway, unless something very improbable comes of this, congratulations to Judge Vitter.
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