by Nicole Flatow
This morning, The New York Times’ Gail Collins adds to the commentary on Adalberto Jose Jordán’s long and obstruction-filled road to confirmation in a facetious column describing her “shock” at Congress’ deep unpopularity. And she means deep unpopularity. As in, “Unpopular like the Ebola virus, or zombies. Held in near-universal contempt, like TV shows about hoarders with dead cats in their kitchens.”
Jordan’s nomination, she writes, is the latest example of Congress’ so-called “bipartisan cooperation.” She explains:
This week, the Senate confirmed Judge Adalberto Jose Jordan to a seat on the federal Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta. A visitor from another country might not have appreciated the proportions of this achievement, given the fact that Jordan, who was born in Cuba and who once clerked for Sandra Day O’Connor, had no discernible opposition.
But Americans ought to have a better grasp of how the Senate works. The nomination’s progress had long been thwarted by Mike Lee, a freshman Republican from Utah, who has decided to hold up every single White House appointment to anything out of pique over ... well, it doesn’t really matter. When you’re a senator, you get to do that kind of thing.
This forced the majority leader, Harry Reid, to get 60 votes to move Judge Jordan forward, which is never all that easy. Then there was further delay thanks to Rand Paul, a freshman from Kentucky, who stopped action for as long as possible because he was disturbed about foreign aid to Egypt.
All that is forgotten now. The nomination was approved, 94 to 5, only 125 days after it was unanimously O.K.’d by the Judiciary Committee. Whiners in the White House pointed out that when George W. Bush was president, circuit court nominations got to a floor vote in an average of 28 days.
No matter. Good work, Senate! Only 17 more long-pending judicial nominations to go!
In an effort to move another one of those long-pending nominations, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid filed a motion yesterday to force a vote on federal prosecutor Jesse Furman, nominated to a trial court seat in the Southern District of New York.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy had this to say about a week spent overcoming filibusters of judicial nominees:
The Senate was forced to spend the better part of this week ending a filibuster against the nomination of Judge Adalberto Jordan of Florida to fill a judicial emergency vacancy on the Eleventh Circuit. Finally, after a four month Republican filibuster that was broken on Monday by an 89-5 cloture vote, and after Republicans insisted on two additional days of delay, the Senate was allowed to vote on the nomination. We voted 94-5 to confirm Judge Jordan. I suspect the vote would have been the same four months and two days sooner. It was a colossal waste of the Senate’s time and another week lost to obstruction and delay.
Now the Senate Majority Leader has been required to file another cloture petition on yet another consensus nominee. … Like the needless delay in Judge Jordan’s confirmation, the Republican filibuster of Jesse Furman, who by any traditional measure is a consensus nominee, is another example of the tactics that have all but paralyzed the Senate confirmation process and are damaging our Federal courts. It should not take five months and require a cloture motion for the Senate to proceed to vote on this nomination. At a time when nearly one out of every 10 judgeships is vacant and we have over 20 judicial nominations reported favorably by the Committee, 16 of which have been stalled on the Senate calendar since last year, nearly all of them superbly-qualified consensus nominees, our Federal courts and the American people cannot afford more of these partisan tactics.
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