Steven Ertelt, LifeNews.com

Senate Republicans blocked the confirmation of Goodwin Liu, Obama's extremist judicial nominee.

The Senate votes today against a motion by Senate Democrats to cut off debate on Goodwin Liu, a pro-abortion law professor President Barack Obama selected to become a judge on a federal appeal court.

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved Liu’s nomination for the federal appeals court in the western United States in April on a 10-8 party line vote. Liu, a liberal University of California law professor, faced opposition from Republicans while getting support from each of the Democrats on the committee and Republican lawmakers have filibustered his nomination, calling him too extreme to be approved.

Today’s vote saw Senate Republicans uphold their filibuster 52-43 with Republican senators Lindsey Graham, Dick Lugar, John McCain, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, and Scott Brown all voting to stop the nomination from moving forward. Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska joined them while “pro-life Democrats” Bob Casey and Joe Manchin voted to allow the nomination of the abortion activist to move ahead.

Lisa Murkowski, a pro-abortion Republican, was the lone GOP vote for ending the filibuster.

During the debate leading up to the vote, Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, a member of the committee, outlined his strong opposition, saying Liu has “activist judicial philosophy is fundamentally at odds with the principles on which our system of government is based.”

…As a law professor at Berkeley, Liu has spent the last few years lecturing about his disdain for the U.S. Constitution. “‘[S]trict construction,’” he wrote in the Stanford Law Review, “[doesn't] make a lot of sense.

Meanwhile, Curt Levey, executive director of the conservative Committee for Justice, called Liu “the worst of Obama’s nominees at all levels of the federal courts.”

Obama picked Liu for the open federal appeals court seat a year ago, but Republican filibusters kept him from receiving approval in the full Senate — forcing Obama to renominate Liu this January. With Democrats controlling fewer seats now, at 53, they are seven short of the 60 votes needed to stop a filibuster assuming no Democrats peel off and side with Republicans, which may not be the case for some moderates or those facing tough election battles in 2012.

Liu is a liberal abortion supporter who conservative legal guru Ed Whelan observed was so left-wing that former “White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel initially vetoed” his candidacy for the Ninth Circuit “on the ground that Liu’s left-wing record made him too controversial.” But Whelan says new White House counsel Robert Bauer “eager to please the Left, successfully pushed back.”

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