Poutine:
Can any of your AZ Democratic contacts offer any guess who the bottleneck(s) might be?

Although the Senate recently prohibited secret holds, holds are still allowed. I would be interested in knowing if the bottleneck is either McCain (doubtful) or Kyl.

I don't know if there is a counter on the website for the bar, but I check O'rly's status 2 or three times a day hoping someone will eventually notice. I do not want to miss it when it finally shows up as inactive.

http://calbar.ca.gov/ Look at what they have on their home page.

Before I ask a question that makes me look dumb to someone else, what's this hold business about? I profess total ignorance about this process, before the confirmation stage.

A secret hold was a method to block nominations and not have to take any heat for it.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities ... s-rules-/1

An earlier hold (this one public) by Sen Kyl:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/06/24/kyl-tauscher-hold/

Every senator can object to a vote being taken, and it takes 60 votes to overrule such an objection. This vote must happen after I think 60 hours of debate. Originally meant to allow motions and procedures to be followed. it was the major source of the party of no last congress as if you cant have a vote you can't pass anything. Nor can you confirm a judge. But if the hold is overridden you can happily vote in favour of the motion, which is why the Reps were able to claim bipartisanship after block voting against having debates on the thing you were now voting in favour of.

The days of the filibuster of 26 hour debates are long over. Now its "I object" and then read the paper in the pub for 60 hours while the senate pretends to have a couture vote debate. You didn't even have to give a reason. Senators have more veto power then the president.

In the last congress you didn't even have to put your name forward as the person doing the objecting, just whisper in the ear of one of the speakers, so you could sit there with your halo and still cause havoc. That's what was removed, and probably a few other rules I don't know about.

Holds and filibusters are completely different animals.

They're different species of sloth.

This is an unwritten rule that the senior Senator of a state can basically override any Presidential nomination of a judge (or U.S. attorney) with unbridled discretion. This has no constitutional or statutory basis, but we put up with this bullshit to this day. Its state variants are equally obnoxious. And you wonder why we get goddamn nothing done.

Senate Resolution #28 that eliminated secret holds passed Jan 27.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:SE00028:
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/r ... vote=00002

This rule used to be one of the perks of the good-ole-boys-club. A senator could stop something dead in it's tracks and not have to accept responsibility for it (because the general public didn't know which senator put the hold on it).

The first thing we will see is the charges against Taitz, once they are made public. They will be at the bottom of the page. Her status will not change until after she pleads out or is tried and convicted.

Sterngard wrote:



Ah, yes. I keep hoping. You know what they say.

Thanks. And I'll tell you what, I'll get the story straight from a federal district judge once I'm sitting next to him/her at dinner soon. We're a relatively big city but a tiny legal community.

Meanwhile:
On Wednesday, the Senate confirmed Arenda Allen to be a District Judge for the Eastern District of Virginia by a 96-0 vote. On Thursday, the Senate confirmed Michael Urbanski to be a District Judge for the Western District of Virginia by a 94-0 vote.

The Senate has confirmed 23 Article III judicial nominations so far this year. Next Tuesday the Senate will debate and then vote on the confirmation of Susan Carney to be a Court of Appeals Judge for the 2nd Circuit.

Yesterday, the Senate confirmed Susan Carney as a Circuit Judge by a 71-28 vote. The first 19 Art III judicial confirmations were approved without a single negative vote. However, three out of the last five had a total of 114 nay votes.

There is a cloture vote planned tomorrow for Goodwin Liu. The cloture vote for John McConnell was 63-33. The vote for Liu will probably be closer. Senators Alexander, Brown, Chambliss, Collins, Graham, Isakson, Kirk, McCain, Murkowski, Snowe and Thune have probably all been pressured threatened by now.


President Obama made 2 nominations for Circuit Judge and 9 for District Judge so far this month (as of May 17).
http://judiciary.senate.gov/nominations ... ngress.cfm

Sorry Poutine, none are going to Arizona if confirmed.

As for my plan to get the scoop straight from a federal judge, it failed miserably. I saw the judge last night while he/she was scooping up some shrimp at the snack table and told myself I'd stop by later in the evening for a chat. But unbeknownst to me the judge had to leave early, and snuck out without my snagging him/her. I'll see what I can get from other inside scoops, though that was the best one I had.

Is there a power struggle among the three Democratic AZ congresscritters or possibly someone else? I find it difficult to believe that the White House is just sitting on three nominations waiting for a better time to announce them.

Oh, look who's jumping in to oppose Goodwin Liu:



Odds are high that she knows nothing about him, other than somebody told her to oppose him because, you know, Obama nominated him. And he's Asian. Kenneth Starr, who does know Liu, and who understands that Liu is highly qualified, supports this nomination. But Chalice Meroni knows better.

Democrats were unable to invoke cloture on the nomination of Goodwin Liu today. The vote was 52 Yes, 43 No, 1 Present with 4 not voting (3/5 majority required). Sen Murkowski was the lone Republican to vote Yes and Sen Nelson (D-NE) was the only Democrat to vote No. Sen Hatch voted present.
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/r ... vote=00074

The vote was disappointing but hardly unexpected.

Help is on the way Poutine.

From the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals:

http://www.ce9.uscourts.gov/absolutenm/ ... ef_Act.pdf

Of course, if nobody is nominated for the positions (or for the 3 presently open positions), nothing changes.

I saw this in the paper, and I believe Sens. McCain and Kyl sponsored it!

Still, I don't have the answer as to why there are unfilled vacancies. I'm sure we do need additional seats, but the ones we have aren't even filled yet.

Also included in the release from the 9th Circuit:



You alluded to this earlier.

Yep. I externed for a federal judge here. I saw first-hand how many of the judge's cases were tied up with illegal re-entry and drug smuggling matters, and that was about a decade ago.

I also remember the first time a federal prosecutor walked into court carrying a huge bale of marijuana and planted it with a *thwack* on his counsel table. A new (at the time) Supreme Court ruling authored by Justice Scalia meant the government had to now prove not only that drugs were smuggled, but how much in terms of weight and substance they were for sentencing purposes. Thanks for the laughs, Antonin!

Scalia has actually done some rather good work in the sentencing arena.

Nonsense. He has done this by accident, starting when he ruled in favor of a white, hate crime defendant who shot at black victims, suddenly sympathizing with a criminal defendant for some unknown reason I can't even begin to figure out.[/sarcasm]. Backed into a corner by his own logic in Apprendi, he was then forced to follow it in Ring and progeny. I give him no credit at all for this, as he did it for the same reason he rules on every other close issue he confronts: his emotional reaction to the political undercurrent of the situation.

"Accidentally" or not, Apprendi is good law, and has reduced thousands of unjustly excessive sentences.