Blocking the nomination of Debo Adegbile is a travesty

This is John Adams and the Boston Massacre meets Willie Horton on the Senate floor — a recipe for senators to do the wrong thing. Which they reliably did.

Adams famously described his decision to defend British soldiers accused in the Boston Massacre as “one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country.” Indeed, in private practice, Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. represented a Florida death row inmate convicted of murdering eight people. Somehow there was no outcry from conservatives about Roberts’s actions.

A more nuanced argument that Senate Republicans made in attacking Adegbile and distinguishing his representation from Roberts’s is that other Legal Defense Fund lawyers, whom Adegbile was supervising, made offensive out-of-court comments. This seems a strained and tangential basis on which to torpedo a nominee.

There’s blame to spare. The administration flubbed in failing to adequately anticipate and defuse the problem.