1. President Barack Obama has nominated former ACLU of Northern California Board member Goodwin Liu to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
 
The 9th Circuit is home to such anti-Christian decisions as finding the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional and supporting the city of Oakland when they tried to fire Christian employees for using the words “family”  “marriage,” “natural family,” or “family values” in email correspondence or on posters in city offices.
 
Liu’s track record indicates he is an extreme judicial activist.
 
In a recent podcast for the American Constitution Society, a far left group, Liu explains his adherence to the “living constitution” idea where judges should adapt the law according to their own views.
 
“What we mean by fidelity is that the Constitution should be interpreted in ways that adapt its principles and its text to the challenges and conditions of our society in every succeeding generation.” 
 
http://dl2.newmediamill.net/media/acs/flash/010509intv/embedliu.html
 
Liu was also one of 17 law professors to file an amicus or friend of the court brief to the California Supreme Court arguing California’s traditional marriage law limiting marriage to one man and one woman was unconstitutional.
 
http://data.lambdalegal.org/pdf/legal/inre_ca_ba_20070928_supreme_professors-sullivan-and-karlan.pdf
 
Ed Whelen, noted conservative legal blogger, critiques Liu’s published stance on constitutional “welfare rights”
 
“Liu argues for what he calls an “interstitial” judicial role in recognizing constitutional “welfare rights” (broadly defined to include claimed affirmative rights to “education, shelter, subsistence, health care and the like, or to the money these things cost”).  Liu calls for judges to engage in “socially situated modes of reasoning that appeal … to the culturally and historically contingent meanings of particular social goods in our own society” and to “determine, at the moment of decision, whether our collective values on a given issue have converged to a degree that they can be persuasively crystallized and credibly absorbed into legal doctrine.”
 
http://bench.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZjkzZDllNzQ3ZmI1OTg0OGUzYmFlMWM3MjEzMWQ5OGU=
 
Despite the fact Liu has virtually no courtroom and trial experience as a lawyer or trial judge and has only two years experience in appellate litigation (rather than the preferred twelve), the left-leaning American Bar Association has rated Liu as “well qualified,” its highest rating.  (The ABA rated a Reagan appointee who had argued 20 cases before the Supreme Court “not qualified”).
 
2. Los Angeles Community College goes to court to defend a professor who called a Christian student a “fascist bastard,” accused him of offending others, and wrote “Ask God what your grade is” on the student’s speech evaluation after he spoke about his faith during a classroom speech.
 
http://www.alliancedefensefund.org/news/story.aspx?cid=5218
 
LA Community College student Jonathan Lopez gave a speech on his Christian faith and recited two Bible verses during an open-ended assignment for a public speaking class in November of 2008.
 
After Professor John Matteson insulted Lopez, the school threatened to expel Lopez under its speech code for creating an “offensive” environment.
 
Alliance Defense Fund attorneys filed a lawsuit against the school and the court issued an injunction stopping any punishment of Lopez.  The court noted that “the Policy undeniably targets the content of expression” and is “unconstitutionally overbroad by sweeping within its reach a substantial amount of protected speech.”
http://www.telladf.org/UserDocs/LopezFactSheet.pdf
 
The school responded by demanding the court lift the injunction and allow them to proceed with punishment for Lopez’s speech.
 
The case will be heard next in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in March.