did the gop do this to clinton's nominees?

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

they keep saying it never happened. but didn't orrin hatch-ling keep democratic judicial appointments from a vote, so that an eventual gop president could stack the courts?

hatch always throws up some technical legisaltive jargon to explain his hypocrisy. what's the real deal?


and not a judicial appointment, but does anyone remeber what happened to william weld, thanks to jesse helms?

[trof]

1. During Clinton's last term

when the repugs controlled the senate, they just wouldn't let the name out of the judiciary committee. I'm no expert, but it works something like this -

Don't know the exact numbers, but for example...say there are 15 positions on the judiciary committee. The majority party gets 8 seats & the minority 7. For a nominee to make it out of committee to the floor for an up or down vote, he has to get a majority of the votes in the committee. The repugs just wouldn't vote to let many of Clinton's nominees go to the floor. They were "killed" in committee. Many times the Dems thought they had enough repug votes on the floor to confirm a nominee, but if they couldn't get it TO the floor it didn't matter.

There was another little kicker called the "blue slip" or something like that. If the senator from a nominees home state didn't like the nominee, he could "blue slip" him, essentially saying "this is one of my constituents, but I don't wany him as a judge". This was usually respected by the rest in his party, effectively giving one senator veto power over a nominee. Hatch did this at least once that I remember.

What I don't understand is how this 60 vote "super majority" came into being. I think it was something the repugs got through when they were in the minority and now it's come back to bite them in the butt. What goes around comes around.

[AP]

5. They wouldn't even let them have a committee hearing.

If you don't give them the hearing, the other side can't complain about not voting them out of committee, and then you don't get the chance to fillibuster when they hit the floor.

And then there was the blue slip thing. Republicans senators wouldn't blue slip Clinton's nominees so they never even got far enough to even be considered for a hearing.

The Republicans nipped the Democratic nominees, not at the bud, and not at the stem, but about three feet under the roots.

[Yupster]

11. Correct trof

The Republicans bottled the nominees up in committee, or in some cases delayed the hearings until Clinton's term was over. To get out of committee you just need a simple majority vote. On some judges the Republican majority didn't like, the Democrats were able to peel off a Republican vote, but not many. Most times the Republicans stuck together.

I don't think the filibuster has ever been used like the Democrats are using it now? If it has, it hasn't been many times.

To answer your question on the Super majority, it is just the amount of votes to cut off a filibuster. The filibuster has always been there. It just has never been used to stop judge confirmations, or rarely used. I don't remember it in my lifetime. The Constitution demands that congress give its "advice and consent." That had been interpreted to mean vote on them.

I know you can argue if delaying something violates the spirit of "advice and consent," but I don't think you can even argue that just refusing to allow action falls within "advice and consent." Basically, the Constitution demands the senate's advice and consent, and the filibuster says, "no. We refuse to."

[dkamin]

2. yes

the huge number of judicial vacancies on the federal bench is a direct result of the GOP's refusing to let these names out of committee.

Harvard Law School's current dean, Elena Kagan, often described as the top expert in administrative law today, was blackballed this way from the DC circuit until Clinton withdrew her name. Apparently, the rumor is that Orrin Hatch nixed this very moderate law professor because he believed she was a homosexual; it is unclear what her sexual preference is, nor has she ever attempted to make an issue of it, one way or the other.

She was supposedly on the fast track to be a future Supreme Court nominee until this series of events.

the GOP nixed exponentially more judges than the 4 (potentially 8 now) judges the Dems may do. not to mention that, without exception, every Clinton appointee was well-regarded, with the appropriate resumes you'd expect for a federal judge. this is contradistinct to the Bush nominees, who to a shocking extent, are extremely poor candidates to be federal judges, ideology aside.

[realFedUp]

3. Hatch is lying

He lies really well...it's part of why he's such
a powerful guy in Congress.

[Fixated]

4. No.

They didn't filibuster any. They did filibuster the attorney general position in '95, and have done it to others. They used the blue slip policy to block 63 Clinton nominees.

Check out www.pfaw.org

[mbali]

7. Semantics

The bottom line is that the Republicans blocked 63 Clinton judicial nominees from being voted on - either by never allowing them a hearing or not allowing them a vote once they got on the floor. One judge was held for more than 1,500 days.

The Republicans did filibuster numerous judges - by refusing to allow debate to end and go to a vote - but each time the filibusters were defeated when more than 60 senators voted to invoke cloture (the mechanism for cutting off debate). Thus, their filibusters on the floor were ultimately not successful. But they DID filibuster.

[Fixated]

8. .....

Really? Link?

And I agree that the point is that they blocked the judges.

[redqueen]

6. No, but they didn't have to.

Dems are now forced to, though.

Others have provided the info, so I'll shut up there.

[jedicord]

9. On NPR Yesterday

A guy they interviewed yesterday morning (sheesh, I SWORE I'd remember his name and where he was from, but, heck, I was driving!) said that 95% of Bush's nominees have been approved.

And again my memory fails me, but it is a considerable amount over Clinton's nominee approvals.

Anybody able to check out NPR's interviews from yesterday morning?

[redqueen]

10. We've approved 168 out of 172.

They're so full of it it's not even funny.

:)