Sin of the 2nd circuit: Judges pointed out the obvious -- By William McGurn, NY Post

How Shira Scheindlin must wish she’d been simply overruled.

Because in staying her decision on stop-and-frisk, and now shooting down her claim to a constitutional right to preside over this case, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has done more than correct her legal argument. In essence, the three-judge panel is saying this: We’re taking this case away from Judge Scheindlin because it’s reasonable for people to question her fairness.

That’s humiliating for Scheindlin. But it’s also embarrassing for all those complicit in her stop-and-frisk circus: the newspaper that egged her on, the civil-rights groups that took her advice to go judge-shopping and the progressive establishment that looked the other way because they wanted the ruling everyone knew Judge Scheindlin would deliver before the first witness was sworn in: a finding that the New York Police Department was guilty of racial profiling.

Furious that they’ve been called out, they’re now busy trying to tear down the circuit court. You see this at The New York Times, which accuses the court of having “unjustly damaged Judge Scheindlin’s reputation.” You see it in the lawyer better known in the green room than the courtroom, who in The New Yorker accuses the court of “arrogance, pomposity, and petulance.” And you see it in the statement from the Center for Constitutional Rights, which denounced the Second Circuit’s action removing Scheindlin as “a perfect storm of procedural irregularity.”

What all these people and institutions recognize — but the general public hasn’t yet grasped — is how devastating the Second Circuit’s rulings are to the project to tar America’s most successful police force with having violated the constitutional rights of the city’s black and Latino citizens.

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