COMMENTS:
* Anyone who imagines that politicians are not professional liars who stand ready, willing and anxious to bear false witness, is naive beyond measure
* Seems to me we need a "Do Your Job Amendment" requiring that congress vote on nominees within 6 months - otherwise the nominees would be automatically approved.
* He's a typical Republican, putting his own selfish political interests over the interests of the American people. "Republicans like to say that government doesn't work, then they get elected and prove it"!!!
* Another great job of the GOP at work--the party which was going to show us the "right way to govern," once they found themselves in the majority. Unless judges sound and act like those judicial geniuses Scalia, Alito, Thomas, and Robert--who claim to be "originalists" in terms of interpreting the Constitution, but somehow found the word, "corporation" in the Constitution--making them "individuals"--they don't meet Grassley's requirements. Best advice to Schumer: Don't get mad; get even."
* Indeed, sir. Corporations exist only through the auspices of government. They are certainly not citizens. I'll believe that corporations are citizens when they put one in jail. Further to your point, where exactly is the foundation for refusing to do your job or as a Congressman or obstruction of process found in the Constitution? "Justice delayed is justice denied." - William E. Gladstone.
* Wonderful job GOP in your first months as the majority in both houses...No immigration bill. No healthcare bill to replace the ACA you so stridently hate. No bill to do anything to move forward on your concern for the middle class. In fact, abominations like your budget proposals do just the opposite. It seems all you can manage to do is sit and wait till you find out what the President wants, so you know how to vote against him...Or bring a law suit against him. Or bring a foreign politician to school the American Congress. Obviously, that leaves no time to do your job.
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Chuck Grassley Blocks Judicial Nominees, Then Says GOP Is Doing A Great Job Confirming Them
"Put that in your pipe and smoke it."
By Jennifer Bendery, July 30, 2015The Senate has done an abysmal job of confirming federal judges this year.
Only five of President Barack Obama's judicial nominees have been confirmed since Republicans took control of the chamber in January. By contrast, when Democrats ran the Senate during President George W. Bush's seventh year in office, they had confirmed 25 of his judicial picks by this point in the year.
But Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said Thursday that he thinks his party is doing a great job with judicial confirmations -- moments after he blocked a Democratic effort to take up a batch of nominees for votes.
Grassley, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, rejected a request on the Senate floor by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) to vote on three district court nominees from his state. None are controversial; all three sailed through the Judiciary Committee last month on voice votes. Yet the Iowa Republican defended his move, suggesting it was legitimate for the Republicans to deliberately slow-walk the process because they are confirming nominees at "roughly the same pace" as Democrats did in previous years.
Grassley argued that his party has actually confirmed 16 judicial nominees this year, not five, because Republicans should be able to count the 11 judges that Democrats confirmed during the lame-duck session in December. He suggested that Democrats had broken with Senate tradition by confirming any nominees in a lame-duck.
"At the end of last year, the Senate rammed through 11 judges, which, under regular order in U.S. Senate, should have been considered at the beginning of this Congress," Grassley said.
"So put that in your pipe and smoke it," he said to Schumer, who protested the delays on his nominees. "We're moving at a reasonable pace."
Grassley gets points for sass, but his argument doesn't add up. For starters, plenty of judicial nominees have been confirmed in previous lame-duck sessions. Democrats held votes on 20 of Bush's judicial picks in the lame-duck after the 2002 elections. The Senate also confirmed judicial nominees in lame-duck sessions after the 2004 and 2006 elections. In the 2010 lame-duck, the Senate confirmed 19 judicial nominees.
Beyond that, it appears that Grassley wants to take credit for confirming the same 11 nominees that he previously tried to block. And this comes after years of Republicans routinely using procedural tactics to delay Obama's judicial picks at every turn -- even if that meant blocking their own nominees.
Schumer called it "a disgrace" that Republicans are doing so little to address the nation's judicial vacancy crisis, never mind that he can't get votes on judges badly needed in his home state. There are currently 63 federal court vacancies, of which 28 are judicial emergencies, where caseloads are surging at short-handed courts. Two of the three Schumer nominees that Grassley blocked on Thursday would fill judicial emergencies.
"The job of the Senate is to responsibly keep up with the need to confirm judges, yet we have 10 percent vacancy in judicial courts," the New York Democrat said. "Democrats will not stand by and watch our judicial system brought to its knees by death by a thousand cuts."
The Senate is leaving next week for a monthlong recess. Grassley said GOP leaders wouldn't schedule votes on any judicial nominees until at least September.
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