While Bush is back to nominating unqualified people, the leaders of the Senate committees have the power to block anyone the president sends up, even if they are good, at their personal whim.
Senatorial Privilege vs. Quality Judges
President Bush recently nominated Milan D. Smith Jr. to fill a longstanding vacancy on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. […]the White House should be looking to fill the vacancy with an outstanding jurist who is learned in questions of federal constitutional and statutory law and who is prepared to dedicate two decades or more to the arduous task of helping to transform that court.
Unfortunately, Smith hardly fits the bill. In his one term as a member of a state antidiscrimination commission, he “distinguished himself” by “his time-management skills,” says one of his supporters.
For all the attention given to the Democratic filibuster of judicial nominees in recent years, the greater impediment to President Bush’s ability to appoint high-quality practitioners of judicial restraint to the federal district and appellate courts comes from obscure Senate practices that enjoy widespread bipartisan support from senators. These practices exist because they serve the narrow interests of individual senators. They are, in short, perquisites of membership in the club known as the United States Senate.
This influence can manifest itself in two ways: first, through the Senate Judiciary Committee’s blue-slip policy, which serves primarily as a tool of senators in the party opposite the president’s; and second, through the entrenched attitude of same-party senators that they have a virtual right to designate judicial nominees in their states.
Edward Whelan article is very agenda driven. He sums it all up in that he wants the Senate to hurry up and pass Bush’s judicial nominations. Too much of the incompetent nominee issue is just glossed over.
Definitely, Whelan would be happiest if only the right-wing nut, neo-con, fundamentalist candidates were made Judges. Not one peep was made about John Ashcroft’s blackballing of Judge White, a most highly qualified Clinton nominee from the Missouri Supreme Court. Yet he repeatedly mentions someone he believes to be an incompetent, from California, was confirmed.
Should the practice be abolished? Maybe. It is one of the anachronisms of American government, the same as the Electoral College and elected state Judges.
It’s the same problem twice, Senators blocking home-state judges is what blue slips are. The real problem is the parties don’t want the other side to get their guys confirmed, with the Democrats elevating things even more when they were last in the majority. If a Democrat becomes president with a Republican Senate, they’ll take things even further.
Ronnie White was actually voted down. These judges aren’t getting any votes.
At least you tried to make it anti-Bush…
AB CD
more than two years elapsed between the time that Judge White was nominated and the date when the Senate finally voted on his nomination. Press reports indicated that Senator Ashcroft was responsible for blocking any vote on Judge White’s nomination for this extraordinarily long period of time by placing a hold on the nomination. See, e.g., “Confirm Ronnie White,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Aug. 11, 1999) (stating that Senator Ashcroft had at that point held Judge White’s nomination in limbo for 776 days).
http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=1137
My point was this is a right-wing nut making a case. Anyone that thinks Scalia, Thomas, Bork, and Roberts are extremely fine examples of an exemplary Judge has his wing-nut loose.
What’s wrong with the Electoral College? The United States is a union of individual states formed under a federal system of government. As such, the Congress and President of the federal government are elected by the states. There is nothing outdated about this most fundamental prinicple behind the entire structure of our government. During the debate in the 1st Congress over the Bill of Rights, it was make clear that they knew the distinction between a federal government and a national government, and that the United States was the former.
Bork was a brillant legal mind, and being such wasn’t very PC….something that the left can’t forgive.
Scalia is a brillant legal mind and also not very PC….
And Roberts is already showing the outline of whats going to be a brillant term as Chief Justice.
Thomas….well….he’s not brillant, but not any worse than a lot of previous Justices.
To be honest, there hasn’t been any brillant legal minds of the Liberal side nominated for many years. Ginsburg is close, Stevens is close.
But most of those who reach the top court are usually smarter than the average bear, no matter their judicial philosophy.
Deciding if the members of the supremes are *good* or *bad* usually is based on your particular political beliefs.
I want justices that read the constitution and understand what the simple words mean and rule accordingly, not make it up as they go.
As to the article, it’s political hack stuff. But, I do believe that the power of a single Senator to block any nomination quietly and without doing it publically, or explaining him/her self should be outlawed. And that goes for non-judicial nominations as well.
The electoral college is old and outdated, but you will never be able to get rid of it because it’s the only way small states can hold their own against the bigger states. And now that the Liberal vote is so heavily concentrated in the big states, the Conservatives will never allow it to be changed. We have only had a couple of elections that the winner of the popular vote didn’t win the elctoral college. So usually the system works.
And before anyone brings up the 2000 election, lets say this…..most non-political anaylsts agree that Gore may not have won the popular vote if the media hadn’t blown it with the Florida calling. There is a general consenses that this suppressed the Republican vote in the midwest and west. By how much is the question. They know it cost Ashcroft his seat in Mo. and Talent the governorship in that state as well as a few congressional seats in the west. But if it was enough to affect the final total for President isn’t clear.
Bork was a brillant legal mind, and being such wasn’t very PC….something that the left can’t forgive.
Scalia is a brillant legal mind and also not very PC….
And Roberts is already showing the outline of whats going to be a brillant term as Chief Justice.
Thomas….well….he’s not brillant, but not any worse than a lot of previous Justices.
To be honest, there hasn’t been any brillant legal minds of the Liberal side nominated for many years. Ginsburg is close, Stevens is close.
But most of those who reach the top court are usually smarter than the average bear, no matter their judicial philosophy.
Deciding if the members of the supremes are *good* or *bad* usually is based on your particular political beliefs.
I want justices that read the constitution and understand what the simple words mean and rule accordingly, not make it up as they go.
As to the article, it’s political hack stuff. But, I do believe that the power of a single Senator to block any nomination quietly and without doing it publically, or explaining him/her self should be outlawed. And that goes for non-judicial nominations as well.
The electoral college is old and outdated, but you will never be able to get rid of it because it’s the only way small states can hold their own against the bigger states. And now that the Liberal vote is so heavily concentrated in the big states, the Conservatives will never allow it to be changed. We have only had a couple of elections that the winner of the popular vote didn’t win the elctoral college. So usually the system works.
And before anyone brings up the 2000 election, lets say this…..most non-political anaylsts agree that Gore may not have won the popular vote if the media hadn’t blown it with the Florida calling. There is a general consenses that this suppressed the Republican vote in the midwest and west. By how much is the question. They know it cost Ashcroft his seat in Mo. and Talent the governorship in that state as well as a few congressional seats in the west. But if it was enough to affect the final total for President isn’t clear.
I want justices that read the constitution and understand what the simple words mean and rule accordingly, not make it up as they go
In other words, you want a judge to rule according to what you believe, not what the law is. Touche’. I guess we all do, yet there are so many rulings by Scalia and Thomas the bely reason. Both are driven by their religious outlook and not by the law. Scalia has no shame, fraternizing with the very people he knows he will be trying. It is probably time Scalia was impeached. Thomas should never have even been confirmed.
National popular vote totals are irrelevant when you are talking about the election of the President. As I said, the President is chosen by the states, not by the people directly. This is the federal design, so I’m not really sure about how it could be viewed as an outdated system by anybody who understands our government… unless you also believe that the method of apportioning representatives and senators to the states is outdated as well.
no Mr. Fusion…..I want them to base their decisions on the constitution as written, period. Laws were made to be overturned if they are against the constitution, the constitution can be amended, but not overturned.
I can agree about Thomas, I was just a child back then, but since studing law have come to the conclusion he was a piss poor choice. I think they wanted a black conservative and there weren’t to many around then, today there are more black conservative jurists to choose from, including at least 1 black woman, that would have killed two birds with one stone.
I don’t know that eliminating the electoral college would interfere with federal representation Mike. They are only tied because a states electoral votes must match it’s numbers in congress. You could oust the E.C. and still keep the the reps. part.