Hypocrisy and The Art of Judge Blocking
At this point in the last two presidents’ first terms, W had 28 lower court justices confirmed and Clinton 27. Guess how many for Obama. Seriously, guess. Come on just guess before you get to the next sentence. Okay, okay, the answer is six, or 6 for those of you who prefer the numeral version, or VI for the strict constitutionalists among us.
Stop and think about those numbers for a moment: 28, 27 and 6.
The Los Angeles Times reports that the issue will come to a head on Tuesday when the Senate votes to end debate over Judge David F. Hamilton. Hamilton happens to be Obama’s first judicial nominee, which was announced by the White House some 230 days ago. 230, 28, 27 and 6.
“This has become more bitter and more partisan than the Clinton years. It is obstructionism across the board,” said Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice, an association of environmental, civil rights and consumer advocacy organizations.
Hmm, not moving fast enough on judicial confirmations. This sounds really, really familiar. I might have to go back in time to the pre-historic era, the age before January 20, 2009. What a time it was — when men used public restrooms for more than 1s and 2s, women stayed home and kept house, and we all used Roman numerals because that’s what Jesus used. But let’s throw caution to the wind and go back to this wonderful age . . . if you dare.
Some of you might remember the brew ha ha that Senate Republicans stirred up over delays in getting Bush’s nominees through back in 2001. They got worked up in a tizzy and they were bringing their A game of the day. Orrin Hatch, the esteemed Senator from Utah said at the time:
Anyone who is interested in helping the president in the war on terrorism should support the president’s judicial nominees.
Huh? What? Oh no, he didn’t!
Does that mean that today, Orrin Hatch and the Republican Senate want the terrorists to win?That really can’t really be the case, can it? But the numbers don’t lie: 230, 28, 27 and 6.
Tags: Judges, President Obama, Republican Crazy
Clinton was just practice for these mugs, now they’ve really got their game on. Hillary was right, there is a vast right-wing conspiracy and they don’t put our country first.
Doesn’t the president’s party control the senate?
The president’s party in the senate includes Carper and Specter.
The senate has become victim to the ‘less than 60 votes = paralysis’ disease.
out of how many nominated?
6 of ???
28 of ???
For those who can’t click on the reference, or who simply can’t read:
Anvil — judicial nominees can be blocked by the minority party by a minority refusal to bring them to a vote. And any judicial nominee can be completely block by a senator from his own state saying no.
lizard — 19 nominees so far. why bothering nominating any more when you aren’t getting any thru.
Next try, try reading the link before you get your panties in unnecessary knots.
no knotted undergarments here, I’m going comando today.
so it’s 6 of 19 vs 28 of ???
28 of 29??? that’s a big difference
28 of 89… that’s the same ratio.
a few details that are missing from this opinion piece mascarading as news:
How many vacancies are there now?
How many nominations has Pres. Obama sent to the senate?, when?
how many vacanicies did the Bush and Clinton administrations have to fill?
How many nominations did Bush and Clinton send? when?
Are there any non-political factors slowing the process? (Like, do the background checks take longer now?)
It’s called a link, lizard. Try clicking on it.
Thank you for your courteous response.
Why does lizard expect us to do his/her work?
Because getting other people to do the work and skimming off the profit is the Republican business model. Why not apply it to politics?
Lizard is classic repuke. make a wildly wrong statement, dont back it up with anything, then point out that people who ask you for proof are violating your freedom of speech…. as long as you ask the question, you are a good american… for example. Did lizard rape and murder a cow in 1987?
The president’s party in the senate includes Carper and Specter.
Carper has been very good on judges, including through the darkest days of the Bush administration, holding fast on Estrada and others.
There appears to be a conservative split on whether to accede to Sen. Sessions’ bogus opposition to Judge Hamilton:
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/67835-conservatives-split-over-filibuster-of-obama-court-pick
It is really bothering me how spineless the party in power is. they can CRUSH the republicans, but they (the dems) have let the Divide America in on Itself Party controll everything. The dems surrender again and again to try to make these insurgents happy, but the rethugs don’t actually have an agenda. They just want Obama to fail. Day after day it becomes clearer that their only driving force is to oppose whatever Obama supports and the congressional democrats have showed a truly depressing lack of conviction. Who really cares what conservunists think?
Here are some conservative ideas in American history.
>Keep Jim Crowe.
>Keep children working 16 hours a day.
>Supporting corporations right to exploit workers
>Deny women the right to vote, deny blacks the right to vote, deny Jews the right to vote.
>Close the boarders to the Irish, Italians, Germans, Brown people,
>proliferation of slavery (they were willing to sacrifice America for THAT one)
>Establishing Christianity as the official religion of America,
and of course….
Staying loyal to the king of England.
All conservatism has done throughout our history is hold us back. Keep us mired in horribly inhumane and unfair practices until liberals… those dirty socialist faggy liberals.. come along and save the day. Well Im tired of apologizing for being a liberal, or hiding that i am a socialist. It’s time the bullies get bullied. Conservatives have contributed nothing good to America in out entire history. It is time to stop trying to work for them, or with them. It is time to stop even listening to those hate filled xenophobic maniacs.
Gee, seems to me that you are complaining that the GOP has started playing by what your party has declared to be the rules.
I thought that working to keep ideologically impure judges off the court was the duty of the Senate, even if that meant using the filibuster to defeat the will of the majority. At least that is what I heard during the bush years — especially when the “bad nominee” had the audacity to be a minority who might one day reach the Supreme Court.
Oh, and I’ll supply some numbers to answer lizard’s question.
98 open judgeships.
25 nominees submitted.
6 judges confirmed.
That compares to 28 our of 64 nominees during the first year of GWB.
However it does help to note that Obama has been nominating judges at a much slower pace than Bush ever did, with Bush making nominations much earlier in his term than Obama did.
And I cannot help but note that the Judiciary committee has already held more hearings on appellate court nominees this year than it did during the final two years of the Bush Administration — 9 since Jan 20, 2009, compared to 8 for the last two years of Obama’s predecessor, which makes this new pace seem like undue haste.
Jeff Sessions’ reasons for trying to block a vote on Judge David Hamilton redefine silliness.
Yeah, a judge who would rule that a prayer mentioning Jesus violated the Constitution but one mentioning Allah didn’t is so damn qualified in your eyes, I’m sure.
What case? Citation, please?
Update: Tomasky digs it out:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2009/apr/21/obama-hamilton-jesus-allah
As Mike says, RWR’s channel-surfing accusation is a “rancidly despicable lie.”
Whack jobs fail. Hamilton filibuster crumbles, 70-29.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBAMA_COURTS