Alexandra Desanctis writes at National Review Online about a smear campaign targeting U.S. Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch.

On Monday morning, eleven progressive groups sent a joint letter to Senate Democrats, urging them to oppose Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court on the grounds that he will fail to check the Trump administration’s possible abuses of power. MoveOn.org, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and the SEIU were among the groups that filed the letter.

This latest progressive attack on Gorsuch is particularly striking because it fundamentally misrepresents both the nominee himself and the proper understanding of our government’s structure. The letter refers to Gorsuch as “an ultra-conservative jurist who will undermine our basic freedoms and threaten the independence of the federal judiciary.” Without providing a scrap of evidence, it asserts that his “extreme ideological agenda” is supported by some “white nationalist groups.”

The progressive co-signers do their very best impression of conservative rhetoric, highlighting the importance of “our constitutional system of checks and balances [which] requires three equal branches of government,” a system that will, apparently, be endangered by Gorsuch. In its most egregious display of abject dishonesty, the letter claims “there is zero evidence that Judge Gorsuch will be an independent check on this runaway and dangerous administration.”

Either these left-wing groups truly know nothing about Gorsuch, or they are hellbent on twisting the truth beyond recognition in order to portray him as an existential threat to the country. Given their track record, it makes sense to bet on the latter. And their fear is understandable; Gorsuch isn’t a threat to constitutional democracy, but he surely is a threat to progressive “rights” that are found nowhere in the Constitution.