HUFFINGTON POST: …There are currently 83 empty district and circuit court judge seats. That means Obama is poised to end the year with more vacancies than when he was sworn in — there were 55 when he came in — and with far fewer confirmed nominees than his two predecessors had by the end of their first terms. While former President Bill Clinton was at 200 and George W. Bush was at 205, Obama is at 160, according to data provided by the Senate Judiciary Committee…
Senate obstruction is the most widely cited source of the crisis. But Obama’s record when it comes to nominating judges is also lackluster. He hasn’t put forward as many nominees as his predecessors, a fact that Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said is fueling the crisis with judicial vacancies. By this point in their presidencies, Clinton and Bush had nominated 247 and 231 judicial nominees, respectively. Obama has only put up 215.
But naming more nominees doesn’t mean Senate Republicans would necessarily move any faster to confirm them, said a White House aide. “If my coffee pot only makes one cup per hour, no matter how many coffee beans I pour into it, the number of cups coming out will still be the same,” said the aide. “It doesn’t matter how many more judges we jam into the pipeline, the vacancy rate doesn’t change at all. The bottleneck is the Senate.”… (more)
