Tomorrow afternoon, the U.S. Senate is scheduled to vote on the nomination of Goodwin Liu for a lifetime appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco.  Liu is arguably the most controversial of all of President Obama’s judicial nominees, and in a speech on the Senate floor today, Virginia U.S. Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) announced he will vote against Liu’s nomination.

In his comments today, Webb outlined Liu’s “almost complete lack of practical legal experience” and “history of intemperate, politically-charged statements” – also noting that Liu’s “frequently strident political views have been called into question.”

“Senator Webb has made it very clear that he will not support President Obama’s controversial ultra-liberal nominee for a lifetime appointment to one of the highest courts in the nation – so where does Tim Kaine stand?” asked National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) spokesman Chris Bond today.  “These are the types of decisions Tim Kaine will have to make if elected to the Senate, and the people of Virginia deserve to know how he would vote.”

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal also weighed in on Liu’s nomination for a lifetime appointment to one of the nation’s highest courts, saying:

As a nominee to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the 39-year-old Berkeley law school professor is a prototype for those who believe the Constitution should be read to reflect what he has called the “evolving norms and social understandings of our country.”  If Mr. Liu’s judicial philosophy wouldn’t be familiar to the Framers, it is de rigueur in the elite colleges and law schools from which he hails. Speaking of the nomination of now Chief Justice John Roberts, Mr. Liu opined that words like “‘free enterprise,’ ‘private ownership of property,’ and ‘limited government’” are “code words for an ideological agenda hostile to environmental, workplace, and consumer protections.”  On the nomination of now-Justice Samuel Alito, Professor Liu was even nastier. In a statement reminiscent of Ted Kennedy’s slur against Robert Bork, Mr. Liu wrote that “Judge Alito’s record envisions an America where police may shoot and kill an unarmed boy to stop him from running away with a stolen purse; where federal agents may point guns at ordinary citizens during a raid, even after no sign of resistance . . . where a black man may be sentenced to death by an all-white jury for killing a white man . . . and where police may search what a warrant permits, and then some.”