Help needed with "the two parties are equally guilty" discussion

[Shanti Mama]

In a Facebook conversation I'm having a 'friend' cited Senator Leahy's blocking of 42% of Bush's nominees when Chair of the Senate Judiciary committee as an example of Democrats being equally guilty of partisan obstruction.

I did a quick google search for data but can't find specific info on the percent of Bush and Obama nominees blocked by Congress.

Anyone?
Many thanks.

[WinkyDink]

1. "Help me refute....." Right.

[Shanti Mama]

2. What's the problem?

[Recursion]

3. Bruce Ackerman and Laurence Tribe started calling for a "slowdown" of judicial confirmations in 2001

Once Jeffords flipped the Senate to our side, Leahy controlled the Judiciary committee and did slow down confirmations to roughly the rate they were during the last two years of Clinton's term, but since those positions (from Clinton's term) were still unfilled, that led to a greater number of hold-ups. I don't know that I could show you a single document that said "42%" but it's not an unreasonable number.

A lot of the bottleneck cleared when the GOP took back the Senate in '04 and the "Gang of 14" (or however many it was in that year; it's always the same people) agreed not to filibuster half of the remaining nominees. The real odd bit was that after that whole thing, Specter (still an R at that point) didn't push the cleared ones through when he had the chance.

[Shanti Mama]

4. Thanks Recursion.

I'm going to research this info so I can argue from an informed position.