Just as he did with ObamaCare and the failed $787 billion stimulus debacle, liberal U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) today sided once again with President Barack Obama and voted to in support of controversial Obama nominee – liberal activist Goodwin Liu, who has said that following the Constitution is “nice in theory” – for a lifetime appointment to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, one of the nation’s highest courts.  Luckily, Republicans were able to block Liu’s nomination.

Manchin’s fellow Democrat, Virginia U.S. Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) declared his opposition to Liu’s nomination on the Senate floor yesterday, outlining Liu’s “almost complete lack of practical legal experience” and “history of intemperate, politically-charged statements” – and also noting that Liu’s “frequently strident political views have been called into question.”

While as LifeNews notes, “Pro-life advocates opposed the nomination,” citing Liu’s “resume of radicalism,” and the fact that “his nomination is so controversial that 42 of California’s 58 county district attorneys warned the Senate not to consider him.”

And not only are Liu’s strident pro-abortion and anti-2nd-Amendment positions well-documented, he has specifically advocated for legislating these liberal ideas from the bench.  As The Hill reports:

But Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), speaking on the Senate floor, pointed to a radio interview Liu gave shortly after Obama’s 2008 election. “‘As recently as two years ago, Mr. Liu said he believed that the last presidential election, gave liberals, as he put it, “a tremendous opportunity, to actually get [their] ideas and the progressive vision of the Constitution and of law … into practice.’  Here is an open acknowledgement by Mr. Liu that a judge should use his position to advance his own views. This is repugnant,” McConnell said.” Obama first nominated Liu in February of 2010. The Senate has twice returned his nominee to the White House, forcing Obama to re-nominate him in September of 2010 and January of 2011.

“Not only is Goodwin Liu anti-gun and in favor of abortion on demand, he has specifically advocated for using the courts to force these liberal values on West Virginians by legislating from the bench,” said National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) spokesman Chris Bond.  “But just as he did with ObamaCare and the failed $787 billion stimulus, Joe Manchin gave President Obama his vote to appoint this radical liberal activist to sit on one of the nation’s highest courts for the rest of his life.”

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.”