Feingold: "I will vote in favor of the nomination of Judge John Roberts"

Yeah, sorry for disappearing for a couple weeks... I had meant to blog several times following the hearings, but life intervened.

The big news, of course, is that Senator Feingold voted to recommend Judge John Roberts for the position of Chief Justice. Read the whole statement, it's always well-written and interesting. But here's the general summary of it:

Mr. Chairman, I will vote in favor of the nomination of Judge John Roberts to be the Chief Justice of the United States. This has not been an easy decision, but I believe it is the correct one. Judge Roberts's impeccable legal credentials, his reputation and record as a fair-minded person, and his commitment to modesty and respect for precedent have persuaded me that he will not bring an ideological agenda to the position of Chief Justice of the United States and that he should be confirmed.

And with that, ladies and gentlemen, the speculation began on what this does to a Feingold presidential candidacy. Here, take a look at the MyDD story on it-- ranging from "This'll come back to hurt him" to "He needed to do this to appeal to centrists."

Here's the real reason (I think): he's Russ Feingold, and he votes his conscience.

I'm still opposed to Roberts. I think that, as conservative as he likely is, he'll hurt this country in the long run. But Senator Feingold has always been consistent in supporting presidential appointees because, somehow, President Bush won the election, and that means he gets to pick his SCOTUS appointments. The only exception to this policy is when the nominee is quite clearly not qualified, and, in this case, there wasn't enough evidence of that.

I might wish right now, fearful of "Chief Justice Roberts" and the Court he'll run, that Feingold hadn't stuck to his principles. But this is what we all love about him, isn't it?