Fili-Busted: How The Judicial Nominee Process Became A Nightmare

[Tx4obama]

Fili-Busted: How The Judicial Nominee Process Became A Nightmare

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid scheduled a climactic vote for Thursday on the nomination of attorney Patricia Millett to the Washington D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, who Republicans have opposed for months. They have no particular objection to Millett -- they objected to all three of President Obama's nominees to the court. The opposition was enough to make the administration withdraw Caitlin Halligan's nomination in March.

The vote Reid scheduled this week may be filibustered, and Reid has signaled -- for the third time in 2013 -- he may "go nuclear" and change the Senate rules to remove the 60-vote barrier to judicial nominations. (Technically, nominees only need a majority to be confirmed, but the Senate needs 60 senators to "file cloture," or agree to move forward with the vote.) Backers of such a change argue that obstruction and delay in the judicial nomination process is worse than ever. Are they right?

Back in 2002, long delays in the Senate confirmation of federal judges so alarmed then-Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist that he called upon the President and Congress to "work together to fix the underlying problems that have bogged down the nomination and confirmation process for so many years." The confirmation process has hardly gotten smoother since then.

Who is responsible for so much obstruction and delay? Republicans and Democrats point at each other. To offer a more comprehensive and objective picture, I developed an Index of Obstruction and Delay and used it to track trends under all presidents since Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s.

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Full article here: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/fili-busted-how-the-judicial-nominee-process-became-a-nightmare

p.s. The republicans blocked cloture on Millet today: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014636403

[Igel]

1. Yup.

You increase the level of obstruction because you're justified--but when the next guy comes along, he's neither allowed to increase it from the baseline you set nor is he even allowed to keep the same level.

The other guy, though, sees a nifty tool that he can use, all nice and sharpened by his predecessor, so why not use it?

At some point its use becomes nearly risk-free and instead of just increasing a bit it becomes routine. You see the same kind of curve when it comes to any new technology, or even new vocabulary (or a phonetic change in language). Filibustering is a technology that's now come into its own, like smart phones or, at one time, WYSIWYG word processors.


It really doesn't help that the courts are more powerful in setting policy than they used to be. Seen as a nice way of getting around a Congress beholding to that nasty, vile, retrograde thing called public opinion and "being held accountable by the voters", that particularly "technology" also became more acceptable. It became routine in the '80s. At that point control of the technology became really, really important.

And there are those who insist that change is always good. That's like saying since evolution proceeds by genetic mutation and natural selection that genetic mutations are always good and anything that facilitates natural selection is a moral good. Ptooey.