Um… I limited it to appellate court nominations because of this line:
So what’s the new claim? All judicial nominees?
Before I spend another hour on that list, let’s lock it down. Is the claim that of all judicial nominations made during their respective years in office, Clinton had more blocked than Bush?
My problem with this is that without names to count up, we’re left with multiple sources that don’t explain their numbers, leading me to suspect that they all derive from the same suspect quote somewhere.
We saw a similar phenomenon a while back with a claim that a conviction for public urination can lead to registration as a sex offender. There were dozens of cites that repeated this claim.
But apparently all of them were quoting a single report, from Human Rights Watch. And when the footnotes supporting that claim in that report were examined, it became apparent that HRW had overstated their case considerably.
So with all due respect to democrats.senate.gov and mediamatters.org, I have to say that if there are really 60 rejected nominees, it shouldn’t be too hard to put names to them.
OK, I named the 23 appeals court ones. Here are 45 district court nominees:
Same cite as above.
As far as claims, I’m not making any. Both parties have been blocking judges since Bush I at least. Both will continue to do so until the voters punish them for it (read: not in my lifetime). Both parties will use recess appointments to get around this where it is considered politically viable.
As far as the OP: It was a purely political calculation. The determination was made that it was better to avoid televised grandstanding on the health-care issue just prior to the fall elections. Whether this offends you or not is likely almost 100% correlated with your opinion of the health-care reform act, so it was probably a sound political calculation.
EDIT: Missed that a few lines actually had multiple rejected nominees. I believe the actual count on that list is 45 people for 42 positions.
Yup, what you said. When Bush did it, the Dems bitched. When Clinton did it, the Reps bitched. When Bush Sr. did it, the Dems bitched. I’m not old enough to remember Reagan doing it, so I can’t say any further. Of course the Reps are going to do it when Obama does it. That’s the nature of party politics in this country. Why complain when it happens and your guy is in. It’ll happen when the other guy is in too.
No, it’s just the tit-for-tat ratcheting up that has been going on for as long as I can remember. Dem congressclowns filibuster/obstruct during a Rep presidency. Rep congresscritters then filibuster/obstruct more when the next Dem gets in. Dem congressclowns then… I’m sure you are beginning to see the pattern? Been going on since about Reagan, and getting steadily worse. I blame global warming.
And seems to me, when provided numbers from generally reliable sources, it is up to you to debunk them. Of course they can be wrong but appealing to it having happened somewhere else for an entirely unrelated issue does not mean you get to toss any info inconvenient to you from then-on. If they are wrong show they are wrong. To ask every poster here to prove the numbers in their cites, going back all the way to original data, is absurd. We accept cites and it is up to others to debunk them if they can.
Willing to bet if I tried what you just said in court you’d waste me on cross examination.
If I said, “106 people have been killed by the Obama administration’s secret police,” how can you possibly debunk that? It’s in the category of proving a negative. It’s up to me to prove my claim by identifying the 106 people killed. Obviously I must know their names; I came up with the count. If you deny they exist, how can you possibly refute that claim unless I identify the specifics?
Ok, so it seems we have: Clinton=23 appeals court blocked, 45 district court blocked, total = 68. W Bush=37 appeals court, 23 district court, total 60.
Assuming I accept that number… is the argument that 60 vs. 68 shows the Republicans’ greater obsteperousness in this area? The Democrats wisely and in a spirit of cooperation limited themselves to blocking 60 judicial nominees, a reasonable number, but the Republicans, intent on intransigence, showed their uncooperative spirit by blocking an unreasonable 68?
Did we ever have threads about Bush43’s recess appointments and the contemporary congress’s reaction? I guess that would be the most useful tool if one wants to point out hyprocrisy and such among the SDMB membership.
I don’t see what the big deal is about recess appointments, anyway, or why anyone should be surprised at the practice. It’s like many Americans are assuming Congress is a full-time 9-to-5 year-round job.
Too bad there’s no objective measure of judicial competence or morality. My (prejudiced) impression is that Republicans object to the appointment of moderate judges, while Demos object to right-wing extremists.
That the Republican swerve to the hard right is relatively recent may be demonstrated by the composition of the Supreme Court when Obama took office:
The 4 “rightists” were appointed by Reagan, Bush-1, Bush-2, Bush-2.
The “centrist” was appointed by Reagan.
The 4 “leftists” were appointed by Ford, Bush-1, Clinton, Clinton.
Given that half the SCOTUS “leftists” were appointed by Republican Presidents, perhaps you can see why I consider those judges centrist, and view the so-called “rightists” as extremist jokes.
But there’s more to the story. The Ford appointee, for example, was appointed in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, Nixon resignation, and Ford pardon of Nixon. It’s fair to say that Ford did not have much in the way of political capital to use to advance a more right-leaning choice. The Bush-41 appointee is widely regarded as someone who changed after his appointment to the bench.
Nor does this simplistic analysis account for the crossover patterns. In my view, Scalia demonstrates the most profound commitment to the quality we should be looking for: fidelity to the written law. And this is backed up, objectively, by pointing out where he has crossed to vote with the liberal bloc. You can’t find similar variances for, say, Ginsburg; she votes with the other liberals the vast majority of the time, which raises the inference that her decision-making is outcome-based.
Of course, you may argue that we do NOT want fidelity to the law so much as we want judges (at the Supreme Court, anyway) to serve as a combination of wise philosopher kings and super-legislators, implementing the policy that we SHOULD have when politics forces the actual legislature away from the “correct” path.
That’s a perfectly defensible view, but it’s not one I share, and I don’t think most of the country would go along with it either. But then again: that’s the point of that view: the idea that most of the country is too backward to be trusted with the really important decisions, and when they fail to elect legislators that will do the right thing, it’s time for the courts to fix it.
OK so is that the distinction, Obama never gave the Republicans a chance to say no (while grandstanding on the health care issue)? THAT is what deserves “retaliation”?
So rationing health care based on ability to pay is NOT the most effective means of distributing limited health care resources? You sound like a communist.
The most logical and straightforward conclusion from the idea that the Republican presidents have nominated a broader spectrum of judges while the Democrats have nominated straight liberals is to say the Repubs are less ideological and the Democrats more. You’re saying the opposite.
I understand where you’re coming from, but it’s solely driven by your preconceptions.
