And the end of the show, Hayes has a "you should know" segment about events for the week ahead. My nominee was a report from the Alliance for Justice, for release tomorrow, on how the filibuster-everything modern Senate have affected the Obama administration's ability to staff the federal judiciary. The press release about the report is here, with a link to this PDF of the findings as a whole. By all means give it a read.
I am storing up for an omnibus "more about the filibuster, false equivalence, and nullification than you can imagine -- plus some solutions!" post someday soon now. For now, and in explanation of what I was talking about on the show, here is the summary points from the report, with emphasis in original. See if this reminds you of any other patterns you've seen in recent news involving the Senate:
- "On May, 7, 2012, the Senate will finally finish dealing with the nominees left pending on the Senate floor at the end of last year. The Senate has yet to confirm a single nominee submitted by the president in 2012.
- "During President Obama's first term, current vacancies on the federal bench have risen by 43%. This trend stands in stark contrast to President Clinton and President Bush's first three years, when vacancies declined by 57% and 60%, respectively.
- "Nearly one out of ten federal judgeships remains vacant. Judicial vacancies are nearly double what they were at this point in President George W. Bush's first term.
- "As of May 7, the number of seats considered to be "judicial emergencies" will have risen by 70%, from 20 at the beginning of President Obama's term to 34.
- "The Senate has confirmed far fewer nominees at this point in President Obama's first term than it had for his two predecessors in office. The percentage of confirmed district court nominees is at historically low levels..."
There's lots more. The second point on the list above deserves special attention. For all their differences, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton were able, during their first three years in office, to place many more judges to the federal bench than left or retired. Thus, the vacancy rate went down. Obama has been able to place many fewer. Thus vacancies go up. Also, as the report makes clear, both the Republican minority in the Senate and the Obama Administration bear responsibility for this problem. The Republicans have been more willing to filibuster nominees than previous Senate minorities have -- and the Obama administration has been slower than were George W. Bush or Clinton getting nominees submitted to begin with or fighting the filibuster head-on.
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* Even allowing for some of the advantages Hayes has with his relatively new show -- it's two full hours of live TV each Saturday and Sunday, the early-morning "hey, maybe no one's watching!" factor may loosen up discussion -- over the months it's been a more sophisticated discussion of political/policy issues than you're used to finding on TV.
