The Associated Press reports that Senate Republicans have reached an agreement with the Obama administration, whereby “at least 19 of President Barack Obama’s non-controversial judicial nominees win confirmation in the waning days of the congressional session in exchange for a commitment by Democrats not to seek votes on four others.” Notably, one of the four is Goodwin Liu, a hard-core left-wing law school dean whom Obama nominated to the already-liberal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
I think those numbers are reasonably comparable to the “gang of fourteen” deal during the Bush administration. Paul has followed some of the individual nominations more closely than I have, and may have additional thoughts on the merits of the agreement.
PAUL adds: The agreement sounds like the right way to go. Republicans have no legitimate interest in obstrucing Democratic judicial nominees for obstruction’s sake, and it is wrong to do so. President Obama’s nominees should be blocked only when they are unqualified or when, like Professor Liu, they are likely to impose their leftist views from the bench.
We’ll have to see the names of the nominees on both sides of the divide created by the deal to assess its merits fully, but I suspect that reason has prevailed, as it sometimes does when everyone is eager to leave Washington for the holidays.
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