by Nicole Flatow
The political “gamesmanship” that now characterizes the judicial nominations process is “not only frustrating but also destructive,” The Washington Post asserts in an editorial today.
As Senate obstruction reaches new heights, and holdups affect even the most noncontroversial trial court nominees, “cases grind to a halt and expenses for litigants soar as even relatively simple matters take an inordinate amount of time to resolve. The legitimacy of the courts is undermined,” the editorial explains.
Noting that President Obama has picked up the pace of his nominations, while the Senate failed to take a simple up-or-down vote on 20 nominees before leaving town early for their summer recess, the editorial puts the onus on Capitol Hill to fix this growing crisis.
Meanwhile, some on Capitol Hill have plans to escalate Senate obstruction, according to a recent report from The Daily Beast.
In the fall, Tea Party freshmen plan to “band together to oppose judicial nominees it believes are too favorable to increasing the size and influence of government, creating a standoff that could strain an already understaffed court system,” The Daily Beast reported earlier this month.
And that’s not all.
se to cancel salary payments for some of Obama’s recess appointees, and are claiming that they will prevent any recess through 2012, Williams explains.
s is collected through the tax structure, Kleinbard writes.
In his article, Winkler traces the surprising and contradictory history of the U.S. right to bear arms, starting with the Founding Fathers’ own version of an “individual mandate” that required many citizens to purchase guns, while forbidding gun ownership for slaves, free blacks, and “law-abiding white men who refused to swear loyalty to the Revolution.”