Juan Non-Volokh, of the Volokh Conspiracy, has written about the reasons my current (and soon-to-be-former) boss, Judge Henry Saad, is still, after many years, being blocked from confirmation as a federal appellate court judge by Senate Democrats.
Juan begins:
. . . I was struck by the opening of [Election Law Blog writer Rick Hasen's] piece:Democrats in the Senate have used the power of the filibuster to block from office the 10 most ideologically extreme of President Bush’s nominees for federal judgeships, while approving a vast majority of his nominees.This caught my eye because it is false.
* * *
Senate Democrats oppose confirmation of four nominees to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit from Michigan -- Henry Saad, Richard Griffin, David McKeague, and Susan Neilson -- because Republican Senators blocked Clinton's Michigan nominees, including one who is related to Senator Carl Levin.
And, interestingly, as Q and O Blog points out, if Judge Saad is truly the right-wing extremist that Senate Democrats would have us believe he is, he would likely not have received endorsements from the likes of the UAW, the AFL-CIO, or the Michigan Education Assocation.
As I write this, Judge Saad is still waiting for confirmation, and it would appear that his hopes ride either on some sort of deal being struck with Senate Democrats, or on the proposed "nuclear option" that would eliminate filibusters for judicial confirmation votes.
[Posted May 23, 2005, from the "Lost Episodes."]
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