Friday, May 4, 2012

Three Step Plan to Completely Fix the Judicial Crisis

The Obama administration is apparently inviting supporters to a strategy session about getting more federal judges approved by the Senate, according to the Washington Times.
The president has invited 150 supporters from across the country concerned about the judicial vacancy rate to the White House on Monday for a forum and strategy session with administration officials, according to a copy of the invitation obtained by the Washington Times.
In the invite, the White House accused Republicans of subjecting consensus nominees to “unprecedented delays and filibusters.” [...]
In 37 cases, the courts have declared emergencies because of the length of vacancy and backlog of cases.
This strategy session sounds like a thinly veiled campaign event designed to make 150 potential donors feel important and listened to. If it is actually a sincere effort to try to solve this problem, let me take five minutes to completely fix it with my three step plan.
Step 1) Have Majority Leader Harry Reid say there is a judicial crisis and that he is prepared to have the Senate consent to judicial nominees with a simple majority vote if need be.
Step 2) Have at least 51 Senate Democrats take a procedural vote saying that the constitutional or senate rules don’t allow appointees to be filibustered. After all, the actual authority for determining what the Senate rules mean rests solely with a majority of Senators.
Step 3) Take a day to quickly approve all pending judicial nominees with majority votes.
I’m not being glib, just pointing out the facts that almost everyone ignores. This isn’t some highly complex unsolvable conundrum that requires an elaborate strategy. A simple solution already exists. The only problem is that Democrats don’t want to use it.
While we desperately do need more judges, this really isn’t a “judicial crisis” since it is such an easily solved problem. The only real crisis here is the crisis of Senate Democrats not wanting to govern. They have decided time and time again protecting the bizarre and destructive rules of their silly clubhouse takes precedence over actually trying to fix any real world problems facing the American people.

Read more: http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2012/05/03/three-step-plan-to-completely-fix-the-judicial-crisis/

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