Congratulations, Judge Vitter

President Mitch has seconded your nomination so...

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu has crossed party lines to back Wendy Vitter, a Republican nominee for a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.

That's our Mitch being very serious and bi-partisan and whatnot. Maybe he really is thinking about running in 2020.   Democrats can only imagine one way to the Presidency. Invariably it involves throwing their more progressive constituencies under the bus.

Vitter, general counsel to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans and wife of former U.S. Sen. David Vitter, R-La., is in line to be a judge for the 13-parish Eastern District of Louisiana. She has won praise for a number of lawyers who have worked for and against her, and jeers from reproductive rights groups.

"Not only has she vigorously opposed women's access to contraception and the constitutional right to abortion in her personal capacity, Vitter has used her position of prominence in Louisiana to spread falsehoods not based on science about basic medical care that American women rely on," said 18 social policy organizations in a letter posted Thursday by People for the American Way. "No such individual should be given the privilege of a lifetime seat on the federal bench."

"The only experience she has in federal courts is a two-day trial that took place 25 years ago, wrote one of those groups, Planned Parenthood Action, in a post Tuesday.

"Ms. Vitter has taken extreme and irresponsible positions on women's health and reproductive freedom, and she attempted to hide some of these views by failing to disclose them to the Senate," The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of more than 200 national organizations, wrote Friday.

Also you gotta like the way that NOLA.com article goes on tsk tsk at these objections as an "ideological crusade."   As we know, the absolutely worst thing any public official can do is allow one's sense of morality to inform one's public policy choices. That is, unless one happens to be a  Republican in which case one is encouraged to crusade away.