Thumbs down: A stranger to the courtroom

In 1969, a senator from Nebraska named Roman Hruska offered one of the least convincing defenses ever for a judicial nominee. When G. Harold Carswell, a Nixon nominee for the Supreme Court, was dismissed as “mediocre,” Hruska declared ‘’there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they?” Hruska’s words must have been echoing through the Capitol this week when the Senate Judiciary Committee recommended confirmation of Brett J. Talley to the U.S. District Court in Alabama.

Talley, a nominee of President Donald Trump, has practiced law for just three years, has never argued a motion or tried a case and was unanimously rated “not qualified” for a lifetime appointment on the federal bench by the American Bar Association. He is, however, an outspoken blogger who, among other things, called post-Sandy Hook gun control proposals “the greatest attack on our constitutional freedoms in our lifetime.” Thumbs down.