If you watch the federal courts for any length of time, you may well come to the conclusion that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals — the district that includes California and most of the Pacific Northwest — is off-the-charts liberal. This is the gang that declared the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional, backed medical marijuana, and (if I’m not mistaken) has overturned tons of death penalty sentences.
USA Today has a good piece this weekend about the 9th Circuit, arguing that the judges are not so far left as you might think — and that its approach to the law may have more to do with the differences between East and West than Left and Right.
