Looks like dandruff.
Mitch McConnell is a raging asshole, and the appointment of large numbers of conservative judges to federal circuit courts under Trump is a worrying thing for this progressive.
But to be honest, I don’t know why that policy, of requiring approval from both of a nominee’s home-state senators, is even a thing. We’re talking about a federal circuit court here, which has jurisdiction over multiple states within a federal court system, and is not an institution of any particular state. If a Democratic president nominated a good liberal judge from Kentucky to the 6th Circuit, I would not want that judge to be denied Judiciary Committee approval based on the fact that Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul didn’t approve of her.
I can see some basis for requiring home-state senators’ approval for a district court judge. District courts operate within single states, so there’s some justification for that. But even then, the federal court system upholds federal law, not state law. Should we start adopting this policy of an effective local veto for other aspects of federal jurisdiction?
Having typed all that, I then realized that the linked story was a Huffington Post story. Knowing HuffPo’s tendency to interpret evidence in a rather self-serving way, I decided to go and investigate the issue. And what do you know? This so-called precedent is not anywhere near as strong as the HuffPo writer would have you believe.
Check out this fact-check article by the Washington Post.
The HuffPo says that “Traditionally, the Senate won’t move forward with a judicial nominee unless both blue slips are turned in.” But the WaPo notes that, over the past 100 years, only 2 of the 19 Judiciary Committee chairs had “a strict blue-slip policy.” That policy existed for 32 of the past 100 years. As WaPo also notes, the policy itself was originally introduced by a Mississippi Democrat and was likely rooted in segregationist opposition to school integration and the civil rights movement. It was basically a Southern states-rights thing.
And, in accordance with my analysis above, the current policy is still to require two blue slips for district court judges, but not for circuit court judges.
To be honest, the most troubling thing about all of this for me, as a progressive, is that Democratic Judiciary Committee chair Patrick Leahy (2001-2003, 2007-2015) gave in to this stupid tradition, and as a result failed to get a whole lot of federal court nominees onto the bench. When Republicans were doing everything possible to obstruct Democratic federal court noms under Obama, I kept wishing that the Dems would grow some balls and exercise their options to push the nominees through. Is it possible that they’ll learn this time? Maybe, but by then there might not be many seats left to fill.
Pretty trivial but illustrative nonetheless. The official White House web site sez:
Not all of them have decided to attend either. I’ve heard the attending players described as the White sox. Which is unfair to the invited players, but striking, as well.
Well, he wasn’t going to win Massachusetts anyway, I guess.
The players’ decisions, ftr. All the whites and the Cuban-American guy are going. All the blacks and the other Hispanics, and the guy from Curacao, are skipping it. Cora insists there’s no divide in the clubhouse.
Trump calls for John Kerry to be prosecuted under the Logan Act for collusion with the Iranian government.
Collusion isn’t a crime. 
He negotiated without authorization? (The Logan Act isn’t about collusion.)
Mick Mulvaney is a tad put out that the Senate Intelligence Committee didn’t give him a heads up that Donald Trump Jr., a private citizen, was being subpoenaed.
Everyone laughs at the “Socks” bit, but the use of two articles to refer to the same noun really adds a nice second layer to the comedy.
If the price of sending away John Kerry is that all similar laws are enforced and Donny Two Scoops ends up in the adjacent cell, that seems like a pretty good deal.
Obvious attempt to goad the House into that impeachment vote is obvious.
It’s actually a fairly smart attempt to provoke that vote, given that the media are certain to give it major coverage.
Nasty, nasty people. If I didn’t know how well a quick vote and then referral to the Senate would work out for Trump, strengthening him immensely, I’d be calling for a vote, too. But a quick vote means the end of House oversight and it means the end of real elections and it means we have Trump until his fatal heart attack.
And that could be many years.
The White House has sent out a transcript of the president’s appearance with the “World Cup Series Champions” Red Sox.
Remember those old war time movies where a soldier would quiz a suspected spy by asking them a really easy question every American should know? (Like: who’s Marilyn Monroe?)
Trump, would fail that question.
When the Red Socks won the World Series, well, that was expected.
And now we learn they also won the vaunted World Cup Series as well!
The Super World Cup Series is next… can they do it, and make it all the way to the Super World Cup Series Finals?
Madness!
Well, those questions are intended to identify people working for foreign governments, after all.
Uh…yeah. This should really help a lot. :dubious:
“Giuliani Plans Ukraine Trip to Push for Inquiries That Could Help Trump”
Lets’s see. A flack for a Russian puppet wants help for the same puppet from a country currently under attack/illegally partitioned by Russia. Yeah, that’s some serious hope there.
The corruption in the Senate is just as much of a story as the rot that is occurring in the White House. It was obvious when the Congressional Republicans dragged their feet throughout the Russia investigation that this was much bigger than just partisan fighting; they clearly had some skin in the game, too. And Ruth May, a Dallas-based researcher with a focus on the Ukrainian and Russian economies, confirmed my suspicions with some really good reporting a while back. She has a really good piece in the Dallas Morning News, and she can be found elsewhere on the Internet. This has probably been posted here before, but in case it hasn’t:
She even had her own Reddit thread a while back, and while I’m not one to really praise Reddit, I found the discussion (at least some of it) interesting:
https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/a5uyp0/i_am_ruth_may_a_scholar_on_russian_economics_who/