Guess which party the majority of recent judicial appointments donated to?

If you guessed Liberal, welcome to a penetrating glimpse into the obvious.

Remember last month when Paul Martin vigorously defended the process for naming judges, after testimony at the Gomery inquiry suggested the appointments were used as payoffs to Liberal lawyers?

Well, apparently more than 60 per cent of recent federal judicial appointments in Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan in the last five years donated exclusively to the Liberal party in the three to five years before their appointments.

Interviews with well-connected members of the legal community, including Liberals, a search of news data bases, and Elections Canada political contribution records, establish that in the past five years a majority of the 93 lawyers who were appointed to the Federal Court, the Ontario Superior Court, and the Courts of Queen's Bench of Alberta and Saskatchewan had associations with the governing Liberals.

More than 70 per cent of those appointed since 2000 to the Ontario Superior Court by Cotler and his predecessors, Anne McLellan and Martin Cauchon, donated money only to the Liberal Party of Canada. Forty of 56 lawyers gave just to the Liberals...

...The situation was similar in Alberta. Seven of the 13 lawyers (54 per cent) appointed to the federal bench in 2000 or later donated solely to the Liberals. None of the lawyers appointed donated solely to the Conservatives...

...High-profile Liberals appointed to the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench included John J. Gill, co-chair of election readiness in Alberta for the Liberals in 2004; Vital Ouellette, who ran unsuccessfully for the provincial Liberals in Lac La Biche-St. Paul in 1997 and 2001; federal Liberal candidate Bryan Mahoney, who lost twice to Conservative Myron Thompson in the riding of Wild Rose; and Liberal fundraiser Marsha Colleen Erb, Calgary co-chair in 1999 of the exclusive Laurier Club, where membership is based on donations of $1,000 or more to the Liberal party. Erb was appointed by her friend, then-justice minister Anne McLellan...

...11 of the 17 judges appointed to the trial level of the Ottawa based Federal Court were found to have ties to the Liberals.

So what happened to Chretien's famous promise to clean up the Mulroney patronage machine? Its looking more and more like part of Jean's legacy includes making Mulroney look like a piker by comparison.

This is not to say that you have to be a Liberal to be a judge. But it can't hurt.

To paraphrase an old saying: "Not all horse thieves are Liberal, but all Liberals are horse thieves."