More conservative nonsense

MANIFESTO

It's always a neat experience when someone I know or knew is in the news. Thus it is with this story:

A coalition of conservative activists is beginning to form around opposition to Harold Koh, President Obama's nominee to become the legal advisor for the Department of State. In Koh, opponents of "transnational" legal theory have found a test case to prove that international law is a political loser—and a way to preemptively discredit a possible candidate for the Supreme Court ...

Koh, the dean of Yale Law School since 2004 and a former assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor under President Bill Clinton, was announced as the nominee for the State Department job on March 23. His nomination didn’t come as much of a surprise to conservatives, as Koh, long considered one of the most powerful legal minds on the left, had been floated as a possible Obama Supreme Court nominee as long ago as September 2008. At the time, Center for Ethics and Public Policy President Ed Whelan wrote a series of posts about Koh’s legal theories for National Review Online, digesting Koh’s views for conservative readers. Among Koh’s sins were appealing to "decent respect to the opinions of humankind" in opposing the death penalty, declaring "lesbian and transgender rights" a closely-held legal position, and citing "international and foreign court decisions" in an amicus brief arguing for the overturn of Texas’s sodomy law.

I knew Harold and his family when he was a teenager. They were all brilliant, and to think that Koh might become a Supreme Court justice is cool beyond words. Of course, not surprisingly, a xenophobic and homophobic "coalition of conservative activists" will have none of it.