RepubliKlans Complain About The Oppression Of White Men On The Bench

muckraker10021 · Nov 9, 2009

Conservatives Complain About The Oppression Of White Men On The Bench

November 6, 2009

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/...2009&base_name=conservatives_complain_about_t
 Dave Weigel reports wont-somebody-think-of-southern-white-men that the conservative Committee for Justice is complaining southern-white-males-need-not-apply in the aftermath of the nomination of one Latino and one African American to the federal bench, that President Obama's judicial nominees aren't diverse enough because there aren't enough southern white men among them.
<blockquote>Does President Obama or his advisors believe that southern white men are likely to be bigoted, making them unfit to serve on the second most powerful court in the land? We hope not and readily concede that it is difficult to know if any such stereotype lurks in the White House. The absence of southern white male circuit nominees could, instead, be an innocent coincidence or the not-so-innocent byproduct of a judicial selection process dominated by racial and gender preferences.
 But regardless of the reason for the pattern we noted in 2007 and again now, even the appearance that Democrats are biased against southern white men is a potential problem for the party generally, and for President Obama’s goal of transcending old racial divisions.
</blockquote>
Just to put this in perspective, a whopping 18 percent of judges on the federal bench are people of color. But in the eyes of this conservative group, assigning more white men to the federal bench "transcends racial divisions," and that doing otherwise reflects a selection process "dominated by racial and gender preferences." Conservatives regularly try to cast affirmative action as racially discriminatory, but rarely does someone openly admit that their only issue with the process is simply who is being discriminated against.
 There's something to be said for considering diversity of life and professional experience in picking judges, but some conservatives often don't seem too concerned about such things unless -- as in this case -- they're making the argument on behalf of white men.

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Addendum:

For those of you who read long articles, read Jeffrey Toobin's New Yorker article about Obama's choices for the Federal Judiciary and the fact that the RepubliKlan minority in the US Senate is using every stall, delay, & deny tactic to block the appointment and confirmation of eminently qualified centrist jurists.

BENCH PRESS by Jeffrey Toobin

VegasGuy · Nov 9, 2009

Sounds a lot like Pat Bucannan bitching about diversity. But this has to be the first salvo of whites looking for help from Affirmative Action laws.

-VG

Upgrade Dave · Nov 10, 2009

The desperation is hysterical.

muckraker10021 · Mar 5, 2010

Republicans Now Even Block Judges They Like

March 5 2010

by Scott Nance

http://thedemocraticdaily.com/2010/03/05/republicans-now-even-block-judges-they-like/

The Senate GOP is blocking the confirmation of even those Obama judicial nominations that Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee supported unanimously. In fact, Republicans have allowed even fewer of President Obama’s nominated judges to even reach an up-or-down vote on the floor of the Senate than they did for Bill Clinton back in the 1990s.

Although the Senate voted Tuesday unanimously to confirm Barbara Keenan to fill a vacancy on the federal Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, Keenan’s is the just sixth circuit court nomination confirmed this Congress.

The Senate has confirmed just 16 circuit and district court nominations. Another 13 judicial nominations are pending before the full Senate, including 10 that received strong bipartisan support in the Judiciary Committee. Seven of the pending judicial nominations were approved by the Judiciary Committee without dissent.

“The Senate is far behind where we should be in helping to fill judicial vacancies,” Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the judiciary panel, says in remarks following Keenan’s confirmation. “Vacancies have skyrocketed to more than 100, and more have been announced. We need to do better. The American people deserve better. I congratulate Justice Keenan on her confirmation today. I look forward to the time when the 13 additional judicial nominees being stalled are released from the holds and objections that are preventing votes on their confirmations.”

Indeed, Leahy notes that last year’s total was the fewest judicial nominees confirmed in the first year of a presidency in more than 50 years.

By this date during President George W. Bush’s first term in office, the Senate, with a Democratic majority, had confirmed 39 circuit and district court nominations, Leahy notes.

“Despite the fact that President Obama began sending judicial nominations to the Senate two months earlier than President Bush, after President Obama’s 13 months in office the Senate is has confirmed only 15 Federal circuit and district court judges,” Leahy says. “During the 17 months I chaired the Judiciary Committee during President Bush’s first two years, the Senate confirmed 100 of his judicial nominees. That is the stark reality and the difference in fair treatment and approach.”

Even Obama’s noncontroversial nominees are delayed, Leahy notes.

“When the Senate does finally consider them, they are confirmed overwhelmingly. Of the 15 Federal circuit and district court judges confirmed, 12 have been confirmed unanimously,” he says. “That is right. Republicans have only voted against three of President Obama’s nominees to the federal circuit and district courts.”

Of those three, Judge Gerry Lynch of the Second Circuit, garnered only three no votes and 94 votes in favor. Judge Andre Davis of Maryland was stalled for months and then confirmed with 72 votes in favor and 16 against. Judge David Hamilton was filibustered and prevented from an up-or-down vote.

“Senate Republicans unsuccessfully filibustered the nomination of Judge David Hamilton of Indiana to the Seventh Circuit, despite support for his nomination from the senior Republican in the Senate, Dick Lugar of Indiana,” Leahy says. “Republicans delayed for months Senate consideration of Judge Beverly Martin of Georgia to the Eleventh Circuit, despite her endorsement from both her Republican home state senators. When Republicans finally agreed to her consideration on January 20, she was confirmed unanimously.

“Whether Jeffrey Viken or Roberto Lange of South Dakota, who were supported by [Republican] Senator [John] Thune, or Charlene Edwards Honeywell of Florida, who was supported by Senators [Mel] Martinez and [George] LeMieux, virtually all of President Obama’s nominees have been prevented prompt Senate action by Republican objections,” Leahy adds.

Leahy singles out his GOP counterpart on the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, for criticism.

” … When Senator Sessions says that he respects me for consulting with home state Senators, and in the same statement criticizes me for consulting with home state Senators, it is a bit disturbing,” Leahy says. “When he asks me not to hold hearings and then criticizes me for supposedly delaying hearings, it is not fair. When the Republicans are not ready to proceed on a nomination and then attribute the delays to others, it is wrong. Maybe the lesson is that I should not accommodate Republican requests but press the schedule more quickly, because otherwise I risk being accused of going too slowly.”

The publisher of the news site On The Hill, Scott Nance has covered Congress and the federal government for more than a decade.

nittie · Mar 5, 2010

This is funny but the fear is real and desparate people do desparate things. This could be whites turning to AA for protection and it could be the start of them using those rifles they been stockpiling for the last 60 years. Stay tuned.

thoughtone · Mar 6, 2010

muckraker10021 said:

 Republicans Now Even Block Judges They Like

muckraker10021 · Aug 7, 2010

Falling Off a Cliff
Judicial Confirmation Rates Have Nosedived in the Obama Presidency

by Ian Millhiser | July 30, 2010

Judicial confirmations slowed to a trickle on the day President Barack Obama took office. Filibusters, anonymous holds, and other obstructionary tactics have become the rule. Uncontroversial nominees wait months for a floor vote, and even district court nominees—low-ranking judges whose confirmations have never been controversial in the past—are routinely filibustered into oblivion. Nominations grind to a halt in many cases even after the Senate Judiciary Committee has unanimously endorsed a nominee.

Such tactics are completely unprecedented, and so are their results. Fewer than 43 percent of President Obama’s judicial nominees have so far been confirmed, while past presidents have enjoyed confirmation rates as high as 93 percent. And President Obama’s nominees have been confirmed at a much slower rate than those of his predecessor—nearly 87 percent of President George W. Bush’s judicial nominees were confirmed.

The data could not be any clearer. As Figure 1 shows, judicial confirmations have fallen off a cliff since President Obama took office.

The Obama administration’s judicial nomination rates are exceptionally low

American presidents for more than three decades have enjoyed judicial confirmation rates near or above 80 percent. This pattern persists across both Democratic and Republican administrations, and it includes presidents who presided over a period of unified government (Jimmy Carter), presidents whose party did not at any point control the Senate during their presidency (George Bush I), and presidents who saw the Senate change hands during their presidency (Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George Bush II).

President Obama’s 42.8 percent confirmation rate is only slightly more than half of President George H.W. Bush’s 79.3 percent, even though President Bush presided over a period of divided government while Obama has thus far enjoyed unified governance.

Indeed, Obama’s confirmation rates are even lower than those during the very unusual 107th Congress when President George W. Bush’s transition period was cut short, in part because the Supreme Court did not hand down its Bush v. Gore decision until mid-December, thus limiting the time he had to plan for judicial confirmations. Congress also changed from Republican to Democratic control partway through the 107th Congress, further delaying routine business as the Senate completed administrative tasks associated with its transition. Nevertheless, fully 52 percent of President Bush’s nominees had been confirmed at this point in his presidency—nine percentage points higher than Obama’s 42.8 percent confirmation rate.

Figures 2 and 3 break down each president’s judicial confirmations to indicate confirmation rates among district (trial) judges and circuit (appellate) judges. Confirmation rates among the circuit judges steadily declined between the Carter and Clinton presidencies, before increasing slightly under President George W. Bush. Yet the confirmation rate for circuit judges was nearly cut in half once President Obama took office.

The most telling statistic is the enormous drop in district judge confirmations since President Obama took office. District judges certainly play an important role in America’s legal system, but senators have never offered significant resistance to the vast majority of district court nominees. Unlike court of appeals judges, who frequently hand down major opinions on controversial legal issues, district judges spend most of their time handling more routine manners such as trial schedules and sentencing.


Obama’s district judge confirmation rates are less than half that of his predecessor, and barely half that of President George H.W. Bush, the president with the next-lowest rate. It is clear that Senate obstruction of Obama’s judges is not limited simply to controversial nominees, but has extended like a blanket over historically uncontroversial nominees whose impact on the law is often fairly minimal.

Senate filibusters and holds are stopping nominations like never before
There is a simple explanation for the sudden drop-off in confirmation rates—obstructionists in the Senate are using filibusters and holds at an unprecedented rate. And it is nearly impossible to break the filibusters and holds on Obama’s nominees.

Although a supermajority of senators can break a filibuster, once a filibuster is broken Senate rules still permit up to 30 hours of floor debate before taking a vote. Presently, 48 of President Obama’s judicial nominees await confirmation. At 30 hours per nominee, the Senate would have to spend 1,440 hours—60 entire days—to act on each of these nominations.

If Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) were to cancel all recesses on August 1 and require the Senate to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, doing nothing but considering judicial nominees, the last nominee would not be confirmed until well into autumn—and that’s assuming that the Senate passed no bills, confirmed no other nominees, and took up no other matters for this entire period!

The picture is even worse when you factor in executive branch nominees. According to the White House, President Obama presently has 240 unconfirmed nominees. Confirming each of these nominees would require a massive 300 days—10 entire months—of 24 hour work days doing nothing but confirmations.

It is easy to manipulate the Senate rules to create a crisis. If a minority of senators broadly object to the Senate’s entire agenda, then it is literally impossible to confirm more than a fraction of the hundreds of judges, executive branch officials, ambassadors, and other nominees that each president has a responsibility to appoint, even if the Senate shuts down all other legislative business to do so.

If anything, the real surprise is not that President Obama is experiencing unprecedented obstructionism. It’s that, given such dysfunctional Senate rules, it has taken so long for such a confirmation crisis to emerge.

Methodology

Post-Carter administration data

President Carter implemented a number of reforms in the late 1970s that limited individual senators’ previous role in selecting lower court judges and transferred much of that responsibility to the executive branch. Prior to the Carter administration, senate patronage played a much larger role than it does today in determining who sits on the federal bench. President Reagan dismantled many of these reforms, but he maintained the executive’s dominance over the nominations process, especially at the Court of Appeals level.

This paper only examines data from the Carter through Obama administrations, and excludes judicial confirmation data from prior presidencies when the Senate played a larger role in judicial selection.

Data sources

Confirmation rates from the Carter, Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton administrations are taken from a 2007 Congressional Research Service report entitled “U.S. Circuit and District Court Nominations by President George W. Bush During the 107th-109th Congresses,” unless otherwise noted. There is no publicly available CRS report that covers confirmation rates during the entire George W. Bush or Obama administrations, the last two presidents’ confirmation rates are calculated using data from the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Policy and the Senate Judiciary Committee. All percentages reflect the total percent of nominees confirmed during an entire presidency, and do not include Supreme Court nominees, unless otherwise noted.

<img src="http://www.nathanielturner.com/images/New_Folder/whiteonlytrash.jpg" width="653" height="470">

QueEx · Aug 13, 2010

08132010Babin.slideshow_main.prod_affiliate.91.jpg

muckraker10021 · Nov 11, 2010

Today’s Republican party are racists.

Today’s Democratic party are spineless, cowardly wimps.

Read the article below about the blatantly racist tactics that senate Republiklans are utilizing against Black, Hispanic & Asian judicial nominees who have all been approved to start working as Judges in our nations Federal Judiciary.

We have a Black President of the United States.
We have a Black US Attorney General.
We have a Vice-President who is the past Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee

The all have instant access to a phalanx of mass media television cameras.

Silence!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Broken Judicial Nominations Process Limps Into Lame-Duck Session
RepubliKlan Senators Block All Approved Judical Nominees Who Are Women And People-Of-Color Despite Judicial Emergencies

http://www.afj.org/press/11082010.html

Washington, D.C., November 8, 2010—The lame-duck Congress is returning from the election to considerable unfinished business, but none more important than the ongoing breakdown of the judicial nominations process. Alliance for Justice is calling on the Senate to use the lame-duck session to provide final votes on all pending judicial nominees.

Unprecedented Republican tactics of procedural obstruction have left 23 Obama nominees languishing on the Senate floor, 17 of whom were reported out of the Judiciary Committee without Republican opposition. Meanwhile, while the Senate dithers, the Administrative Office of the Courts has declared “JUDICIAL EMERGENCIES” in 50 federal courts, affecting 30 states, MEANING THERE AREN'T ENOUGH JUDGES TO ADEQUATELY SERVE THE NEEDS OF JUSTICE. 

In addition to being desperately needed and largely uncontroversial, these nominees represent the hope of creating a federal judiciary that is representative of our nation’s demographic diversity. Thirteen of the pending nominees are people of color and 10 are women. Many would be historic “firsts” in their respective courts if confirmed to the bench. 

Though these nominees have been awaiting votes for far too long, lame-duck sessions have frequently been an occasion when judicial nominees are approved. For instance, during the 2002 lame-duck session in a closely split Senate, President George W. Bush had 20 nominees confirmed, all but one on a voice vote, including controversial circuit court nominee Michael McConnell.

According to AFJ President Nan Aron, “These historic levels of obstruction have serious consequences for American courts. The Senate needs to put aside partisan rancor, perform the task the Constitution has assigned to it, and confirm these qualified, diverse judges to the federal bench. It would be an unforgiveable tragedy if obstructionism during the lame-duck Congress helped create a lame-duck judiciary.”

muckraker10021 · Aug 8, 2011

For Obama, A Record On Diversity But
Delays On Judicial Confirmations

by John Schwartz

August 6, 2011

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/u...gewanted=2&sq=judicial nominees&st=cse&scp=1#

President Obama made history when he nominated Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court. He did it again with his second nominee, Elena Kagan, raising the number of women on the nation’s highest court to three.
 And Mr. Obama has also added judicial diversity further down the federal ladder. His administration has placed a higher percentage of ethnic minorities among his nominees into federal judgeships than any other president.
 So far, Mr. Obama has had 97 of his judicial nominees confirmed — compared with 322 for President George W. Bush and 372 for President Bill Clinton, who each served two terms. So far in Mr. Obama’s presidency, nearly half of the confirmed nominees are women, compared with 23 percent and 29 percent in the Bush and Clinton years.
 Some 21 percent are black, compared with 7 percent under Mr. Bush and 16 percent under Mr. Clinton. And 11 percent are Hispanic, compared with 9 percent under Mr. Bush and 7 percent under Mr. Clinton. Of the nearly two dozen nominees awaiting a Senate confirmation vote, more than half are women, ethnic minorities or both.<div align="right"><img src="http://i.min.us/ij8xWw.PNG" align="right"></div>
 Race is not the only measure of diversity under consideration by the administration — for example, J. Paul Oetken was the first openly gay man to be confirmed to the federal judiciary, in his case in the Southern District of New York. Mr. Obama has presented three other openly gay nominees to the Senate as well.
 “The president wants the federal courts to look like America,” said Kathryn Ruemmler, the White House counsel. “He wants people who are coming to court to feel like it’s their court as well.”
 Curt A. Levey, the executive director of the Committee for Justice, a conservative legal organization that often speaks out on judicial nominations, said discussions of diversity tracked old debates over affirmative action.
 “Diversity is a good thing, but how do you achieve it — by quotas?” he said. “Do you achieve it by lowering your standards? Or do you achieve it by removing any discriminatory barriers that might exist and by casting a wide net?”
 “The more you focus on race and gender,” Mr. Levey added, “the less you’re going to focus on other traditional qualifications — that’s simply the math of it.”
 Besides, he said, “If you believe in proportionalism, as the Obama administration appears to, given the way they tout these numbers, the other races are, to some degree, getting stiffed.”
 Thomas H. Dupree Jr., former principal deputy attorney general in the George W. Bush administration, said ethnic diversity was one factor that should be weighed with other factors.
 “It is important to think about how a candidate’s past experience in the law may give them knowledge or a perspective that can strengthen our judiciary,” he said.
 “A judge who has spent his career as a prosecutor may bring a different perspective to applying the law than a judge who has been a law professor,” he added, “just as a judge who spent her prior legal career as a litigator may see things differently from someone who worked at a public interest firm.”
 Mr. Dupree, who has signed on with a group advising Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate, on judicial selection, emphasized that he was speaking only for himself.
 Ms. Ruemmler said the administration does seek a broad range of life experiences in nominees.
 “It’s not just about race, it’s not just about gender, it’s not just about experience,” she said. “We try to look at judges in a much more holistic way.”
 Getting nominees confirmed has proved a challenge for the administration. A recent report from the Constitutional Accountability Center in Washington said the federal judiciary had had more than 750 days with at least 80 vacancies on the federal bench, which adds to the workload of an already overburdened judiciary. 
 “Never before has the number of vacancies risen so sharply and remained so high for so long during a president’s term,” wrote the group, which noted that all presidents come into office with a backlog that gets worked down more quickly over time.
 Judicial nominations have been a source of escalating conflict since the fight over President Ronald Reagan’s attempt to nominate Robert H. Bork to the Supreme Court in 1987. Over the years, fights have included refusals by Senate Republicans to hold hearings on Mr. Clinton’s nominees and Democratic senators filibustering nominees of Mr. Bush.
 Now that conflict is just one of many in a continuing battle between Congress and the president that also includes nominations to the executive branch and efforts to pass major legislation.
 While Mr. Obama was relatively slow to nominate judges earlier in his term, his team has now sped up, the group said. But Congress has been slow to confirm nominees, some of whom “go through committee without any opposition and still spend months and months waiting for a vote on the Senate floor,” said Doug Kendall, the group’s founder. “That’s never happened before, and it’s a big part of the reason the judicial vacancy problem has reached crisis proportions.”
 Ms. Ruemmler said, “We would obviously like the pace to improve.”
 Liberal activists say there is a political agenda involved. “Republicans are using judgeships as political pawns in a partisan game,” said Nan Aron, the founder and president of Alliance for Justice, a liberal advocacy group in Washington.
 John Ashbrook, a spokesman for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, disagreed with the notion that politics was slowing confirmations, noting that the Senate had confirmed a handful of judges before going into its current recess.
 “Senate Republicans didn’t object to any of the judicial nominees that the majority proposed this week,” he said. “In fact, our members agreed to confirm several judges.”
 Mr. Levey said that while his group and others had mounted resistance to several Obama nominees, including Goodwin Liu, a nominee to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit who withdrew after a Senate filibuster, there was no overarching campaign to slow the process.
 “If there is a plan to delay these noncontroversial nominees, nobody has told me about it,” he said. He instead attributed the pace of confirmations to “the general lack of cooperation on all issues” in Congress.
 Either way, the effect might be the same, said Ms. Aron, whose organization issues regular reports on judicial nominations. She warned that confirmations slow to a trickle during an election year.
 “We’re looking at the next seven months as the time that the pace of confirmations has to accelerate to have a fully staffed judiciary,” she said. “The window is closing soon.”

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RepubliKlans Complain About The Oppression Of White Men On The Bench

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