I have been meaning to write a much longer post on this subject, and just never found the time, but…. the short version is this: John McCain’s behavior re judges has been not merely a bad judgment call (i.e., that the Gang of 14 was a well-meaning but flawed effort by McCain and others to ensure passage of some conservative judges — which I do NOT believe, by the way, because I believe the real motivation was just to get the issue off the table as painlessly as possible), but has actually been reprehensible.
Mark Levin and Andrew McCarthy do a pretty solid job explaining why the Gang was a huge betrayal of conservatives, ESPECIALLY by McCain. But they make one mistake: Jim Haynes, the superbly qualified chief counsel at the Pentagon, was NOT mentioned in the Gang deal. He was killed (as Levin and McCarthy later note) not by Dems, but by the horrible Lindsey Graham and McCain acting in concert. There is much more to be said on this, and I have written about it twice. Again, I will blog more about this later, but for now, please read these linked stories and then try telling yourself that John McCain cares about treating judicial nominees fairly and that he cares at all about the whole issue of judges. He does not. And his nominees would be just as likely to pass muster with Joe Lieberman than with John Aschcroft.