Still fighitng the 5th Circuit

Today Leslie Southwick faces the Senate Judiciary Committee as Bush's most recent Mississippi pick to join the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Southwick's pattern has followed that of Pickering's - at first seen as reasonable by all sides and controversial by none - until the far-left special interest groups opposed to him on philosophical and not judicial grounds started smearing him. Here is the story in today's Clarion Ledger. Perhaps the Democrats will let Southwick go through now that this isn't as big of an issue as the past...but they might continue to stall in hopes that a Democrat can make the appointment after 2008 instead.