[Article first appeared at Red County.]

In a twist of fate tailored for headline writers at the New York Post, nominee for the Ninth Circuit Court, Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu, has once again been caught trying to sneak his homework into the teacher’s grading stack well beyond the due date.

On Monday, Liu delivered another supplement to his initial questionnaire from the Senate Judiciary Committee. The delivery marks the fourth such amendment since the first installment on February 24. The newly submitted pages include 117 items missing from his third revision that was delivered on March 20, well after legitimate concerns about Liu’s qualifications and ideology had begun to spark debate about the Liu nomination by bloggers on both sides of the political spectrum.

In Liu’s cover letter to Monday’s document dump, the current darling of the Left offered his "sincere and humblest apology" to the Committee for his earlier omissions. He also submitted a detailed set of reasons for not having included such a large number of pertinent items in the first place. Liu did not, however, extend to the Committee any offer to postpone the hearing currently scheduled for April 16 in order to give them time to review the substantial docket of new information.

(The entire collection of Liu’s nomination materials can be viewed here. The cover letter begins on page 84, and a list of new materials begins on page 112.)

Among a litany of excuses for his lapses, Liu wrote, "I did not think to include various occasions when I spoke at informal seminars, brown bag lunches, or student or alumni gatherings on campus or elsewhere because I viewed those occasions as part of my day-to-day work as a faculty member, akin to teaching class or meeting with students. I now understand that those should have been included as well."

That explanation plus a sappy-eyed little puppy on a greeting card might get Liu out of a kindergarten teacher’s dog house, but it didn’t pass muster with ranking Republican on the Committee, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL). Along with other Republicans on the Committee, Sessions sent a sternly worded letter to committee chair Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) on Tuesday.

"At best, this nominee’s extraordinary disregard for the Committee’s constitutional role demonstrates incompetence,” they wrote. “[A]t worst, it creates the impression that he knowingly attempted to hide his most controversial work from the Committee."

"These are not minor omissions," they wrote. "[Liu’s] participation in and comments during each [event] are crucial to this Committee’s review of his nomination."

Leahy responded to the Republicans’ concerns by stating that he saw “no reason to further delay [Liu’s] opportunity to appear before the Committee.”

On Wednesday, Sessions continued to press on Leahy for a postponement of next week’s hearing. Sessions stated in an official release, “Given the alarming nature of Liu’s writings and speeches, and the fact that he withheld them from our Committee, it is critical that we have sufficient time to study the newly uncovered material and determine what else may be missing.”

In the honeymooning bliss of the Obama administration’s early days, incompetence of this variety was carelessly swallowed with a grain of salt; a freshman White House team frequently gets graded on a pass/fail basis against a very shallow curve when it comes to getting the feel for the bureaucratic machine under their control. Now that the champagne-soaked halcyon first 100 days have given way to a 300-plus day hangover, the even Democratic apologists need to consider abandoning support for the Liu nomination.

A network of blogs including Red County (here, here, and here) have vigorously pursued Liu’s background since his nomination was quietly offered by the White House earlier this year. Although endorsements from traditional media — the Los Angeles Times has been a particularly proud bell-ringer for Liu — and groups advocating liberal judicial principles continue to patch holes in Liu’s foundering boat, the bilge is filling faster than it can be pumped.

Evidence of Liu’s support for racial reparations (even if only in concept), his extremely flexible standard for interpreting the Constitution, and his support for using social justice – not the written law – as a basis for passing judgment have been positively documented, and should be reason enough to put the Liu nomination in the shredder. Even reasonable Democrats averse to waded into troubling ideological waters should have little trouble explaining a vote to reject a candidate who, by his own account, has never written a judicial opinion, and whose practical experience as an attorney was brief by standards previously set for appointments to the top appellate court bench. As details of Liu’s speaking engagements and panel participation continue bubbling to the surface, his curriculum vitae as a left-wing legal ideologue expands, but his nuts and bolts skill set for being a judge remains static and unsatisfactory.

The reaction of Senate Republicans on the Judiciary Committee to Liu’s exclusions may be less than charitable due to the emergence of pattern among many of President Obama’s nominees of withholding vital information during the confirmation process. A response has yet to be received from a March 8 request to Second Circuit Court nominee Judge Robert Chatigny for details germane to his nomination. Questions about Attorney General Eric Holder’s serious omissions with regard to legal work done on behalf of terror suspects comprises an implicit allegation of a serious conflict of interest in the chief lawman’s oversight of cases involving terror suspects.

The Committee’s function — to advise and consent — is critically impaired when it is prevented from fully exercising due diligence. Circuit court judges and attorneys general are obviously not low-grade posts, and in many cases preside over decisions in which life and death are potential outcomes. The standard for complete disclosure is one that one would have assumed would not need clarification, particularly for someone who has achieved as much academically as Liu.

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