Hoft aims at "radical judge," hits Reagan and Bush appointees

Gateway Pundit Jim Hoft -- last seen inventing Democratic efforts to "com[e] after your guns" -- has turned his efforts at creative writing to the federal courts. 

Citing an Associated Press article, Hoft comments that "A radical judge ruled today that a Pennsylvania town does not have the right to enforce national immigration law and crack down on illegal immigrants." Hoft goes on to speculate, "The progressive judge must be looking for a job in the Obama Administration, huh?"

It's true that the author of the opinion from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Chief Judge Theodore McKee, was appointed by President Bill Clinton. But the two judges who joined his opinion (and thus presumably would be classified by Hoft as "progressive" and "radical") were both appointed by Republican presidents.

Judge Eugene E. Siler, Jr. was appointed to the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Kentucky by President Gerald Ford, and appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit by President George H.W. Bush. Judge Richard Lowell Nygaard was appointed to the Third Circuit by President Ronald Reagan.

So no, Jim Hoft's attack doesn't make any sense. But he's in good company; his right-wing compatriots frequently smear judges with whose opinions they disagree as left-wing radicals. Those media often ignore that those judges were themselves appointed by Republicans or that their legal opinions are shared by Republican-appointed judges.