“There are currently 15 vacancies on federal appeals courts around the country. I’m hoping Obama’s future appointments annoy the Religious Right as much as this one has.”

By Rob Boston -From Americans United for Separation of Church/State:

“U.S. District Judge David Hamilton has been nominated by President Barack Obama to a seat on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and will face the Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow. The Religious Right smear machine is operating on full power.

According to March 17 e-mail alert from Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, Hamilton is guilty of “hostility to good law on issues of life and faith.” A few days later, Perkins told supporters, “Confirming him to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals would be a grave setback for the culture of life and all who cherish constitutional restraint. We cannot stress the urgency of this nomination enough.”

Perkins is hardly alone. The American Center for Law and Justice accuses Hamilton of being an extremist on abortion rights and says he is “entirely out-of-step with the opinion of the majority of Americans.  …

What did Hamilton do to deserve such scorn?

In 2005, he ruled that the Indiana House of Representatives must stop opening its sessions with prayers that were almost exclusively Christian. Hamilton had the temerity to point out that government has no business sponsoring a certain type of religious worship and referred to a 1983 Supreme Court ruling permitting legislative prayer as long as it is non-sectarian.

Hamilton also believes that a woman should have the right to choose an abortion under certain circumstances without having to first jump through a series of patronizing hoops, a stance codified by the Supreme Court in 1973.”

I wondered when I’d be on this side of this process…

see: http://blog.au.org/2009/03/31/judge-not-religious-right-attacks-obamas-first-judicial-nominee/