On The Best of the Web, James Taranto questions the wisdom of the Senate Republicans' tactic of calling firefighter Frank Ricci as a witness in the Sotomayor hearing:

[H]aving a litigant testify against a judge who ruled against him is a political stunt that is likely to come back to haunt Republicans. Stuart Taylor of National Journal adduces evidence of procedural irregularities in the Second Circuit's handling of the Ricci case, and this is certainly worth the senators' time to explore.

But Ricci himself has no relevant expertise. The only thing his testimony may establish is that Sotomayor ruled against a sympathetic plaintiff. Sometimes that is a judge's job, as John Roberts explained during his confirmation hearing for chief justice:

If the Constitution says that the little guy should win, the little guy's going to win in court before me. But if the Constitution says that the big guy should win, well, then the big guy's going to win, because my obligation is to the Constitution.

As far as we can tell, Ricci will be the first individual litigant to testify in a Supreme Court confirmation hearing. (During Samuel Alito's hearings, Democrats called a lawyer who argued that Alito should have recused himself from a client's case.)

The next time a Republican president nominates someone to the high court, it's hard to imagine that the Democratic witnesses won't include a parade of sympathetic litigants. And does anyone doubt that the Democrats will be more effective than the Republicans at such theatrics?/blockquote>