"There is a question, I think, among many of my colleagues, whether… an activist conservative can become a judge that is not an activist judge."

"For my vote, I have to have certainty. And I don't know quite how to get it, in view of this record."

Said Senator Dianne Feinstein, questioning Michael Boggs, a Georgia state court judge and former legislator who was nominated by Obama to serve as a federal district court judge.

[As a Georgia legislator,] Boggs had championed an amendment to Georgia's constitution to ban gay marriage, urging his colleagues at the time “to stand up for things that are common-sensical, things that are premised on good conservative Christian values.”...

Boggs had also backed a proposal requiring Georgia physicians to post the number of abortion-related procedures they performed over the last decade online....

[Senator Richard] Blumenthal... said he found it “incredible … that you would not understand that this amendment would put doctors at risk.”

Boggs also voted twice as a state legislator to keep the Confederate battle emblem as part of Georgia’s state flag....

Yikes. Obama nominated him. The Senators now must perform this theater of moderated outrage for the people — their segment of the people who find all of these things hateful.

This is quite a record of bigotry, from the perspective of a voter who's had his political mind prepped by the Democratic Party. Racist, anti-gay, and warring on women — all in one man's 4-year legislative record.

What an irksome problem for Feinstein and the other Democrats in this election year! Apparently Feinstein et al. believe they can get through this with some Judiciary Committee theater around the notion of "judicial activism." Like any legislator, Boggs was a political activist — in his case, an activist for a cause Democrats see fit to call "conservatism."

But every good judge supposedly knows to leave political activism to the political sphere, so if only Boggs intones the usual lines forswearing "activism" and professing dedication to purely legal analysis, then the Senators can recite their lines about how they believe he has adequately demonstrated fealty to judicial values.

Dianne Feinstein wants certainty. You hear that, voters?

But, of course, Feinstein and her co-Democrats do love their activist judges when they are liberal activist judges — whom they do not call activist judges. Senators whip out this "activist judges" label when they think they won't like the direction judges will take in their decisions (whether or not those decisions will rest soundly in legal analysis). Feinstein's question is whether "an activist conservative can become a judge that is not an activist judge." That's the liberal Senator's version of a question that a conservative Senator would phrase as whether "an activist liberal can become a judge that is not an activist judge."

We're very used to this senatorial theater around the word "activist," but perhaps some of the people will find the performances convincing. Is it catharsis yet?