The Virginia judge who ruled against the mandate part of Health Care Reform has a number of ties to the Republican party and even to the state attorney general who filed the suit itself. A pretty good case could be made that Federal District Judge Henry Hudson should have erred on the side of recusal.
Steve Benen wrote a blog post similar to (though better than) one I was thinking of writing…about how if a Democrat had done this, Fox News would explode with outrage and talk of how the judge should be recalled or impeached or just dragged from his chambers and beaten with hockey sticks. Since Republicans got the ruling they wanted, hardly a word of this conflict of interest is mentioned on their side of the media. No one is even saying, "Obviously, this is a wise and correct ruling and it's unfortunate that it came from a judge who could be accused by some of impropriety."
That was one of the galling things about the whole Bush-Gore vote count. No one was at all uncomfy with how their side won. It was kind of like, "We got the outcome we wanted so everything that got us here must have been inarguably legit." You also never hear anyone say, when a judge rules to their liking, that the law really doesn't say what he says it says. Tomorrow, if the Supreme Court ruled that guys with lots of comic books don't have to pay taxes, a lot of my friends and I would say, "Yeah, sure! That's implicit in the Constitution!"