Reply #127: Actually, he was first nominated by Ronald Reagan.

[mikeytherat]

Yes. That Ronald Reagan - St. Ronnie.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-08-05/judge-vaughn-walker-prop-8-judge-target-for-gay-marriage-foes/

In fact, Judge Vaughn Walker is a Republican who was first nominated to the bench by President Ronald Reagan. The unexpected ironies do not stop there. His nomination was stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee over accusations that Walker was too conservative.

Among his opponents were Nancy Pelosi (who described him as “insensitive” to gays and the poor), Ted Kennedy and leading gay activist groups at the time. In particular, they took issue with Walker’s legal representation of the National Rifle Association, chemical companies, and the United States Olympic Committee in a lawsuit that blocked the use of the term “Gay Olympics.” A San Francisco lawyer named Mary Dunlap, who faced off against Mr. Walker in the “Gay Olympics” case, was quoted in The New York Times in 1988 saying, “I think his lack of compassion and inhumanity and coerciveness certainly disqualify him from consideration for the federal judiciary.”

On the flipside, Walker’s defenders included Ed Meese and Strom Thurmond. The outcry at the time was so considerable that it fell to Reagan’s successor, George H. W. Bush, to re-nominate Walker to the federal bench. At the time, Mr. Walker summed up his beliefs by saying, “Lawyers acting in a professional way must divorce himself from personal views.”

mikey_the_rat