ConfirmThem

Seems like the WH is getting ready to promote Chief Judge Robert Conrad (WDNC) to the 4th Circuit.

The list of district court nominees now includes all of the remaining four who were left on the Executive Calendar at the end of the last Congress - Howard, Fischer, Jarvey and Lioi. If all of them (including Smith) get confirmed before the President's day recess, it leaves only Keisler and Hardiman as nominees who already have had hearings but are still pending in committee.

Do you have a link about Conrad, or did a little birdie who wants to remain anonymous whisper something into your ear?

Yes, please provide some info if you can. It's an interesting choice (and a good one).

http://www.fjc.gov/servlet/tGetInfo?jid=3085

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Conrad,_Jr.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Conrad%2C_Jr.

It looks like Wikipedia won't allow a direct link to the Conrad article. The article says that Conrad recommended a independent counsel to investigate Al Gore. Will the Democrats like this?

I cannot reveal my sources, but let's just say that the WH is in the process of doing a preliminary investigation.

As for being recommended to be IC, I suppose it is good for him that he did not take it. :-)

I missed the point. I see that Conrad was the one who recommended that IC be appointed, not that he was the one who was recommended to be IC. Huh. But I guess since IC wasnt appointed, it shouldnt be THAT big of a deal. After all, Janet reno appointed Conrad to head the committee, so he couldn't have been THAT much of a partisan.

Thanks for the update - that's good news about Smith getting closer to a seat on the 9th. Now I'd like to see Bush finally re-nominate Kethledge & Murphy to the 6th Circuit and actually press to move them along.

are still listed on the WH site. what is the deal here? were they actually returned or not? I never actually heard that they were, but everyone seemed to assume it.

Bush hasn't bothered to renominate any of the five Michigan people (Kethledge & Murphy for the Circuit, Jonker & Maloney & Neff for the Western District).

Plus Bush hasn't nominated anyone for the longstanding vacancy in the Eastern District of MI (created when J. Duggan took senior status over SIX years ago).

There's now a second vacancy in the E.D. Michigan: J. O'Meara took senior status on Jan 1.

What Bush is waiting for, especially on the Circuit and Western District, I don't know.

Before renominating any Michigan nominees, Bush may be forced into waiting by Levin and Stabenow. They may be demanding all sorts of things now.

We can thank Sam Brownback for placing a hold on Neff and killing the deal Bush made with Levin & Stabenow to get all of them through. Otherwise, we could have confirmed all 5 of the Michigan nominees while we had the majority. The 6th Circuit would be fully staffed, and with a solid long-term majority of judges who don't legislate from the bench.

Will we have to retake the Senate and defeat Hillary just to get these guys on the bench now?

That would mean a fair number of 6th Circuit panels with a left-wing majority over the next 3 years.

And the Western District of Michigan will grind to a halt. We can't expect the Senior Judges and their clerks to keep doing the work of active judges (Enslen in Kalamazoo & Quist in Grand Rapids). And what happens when CJ Bell takes senior status in a few years? We will probably have the only district in the country without one single active judge.

Will we have to retake the Senate and defeat Hillary just to get these guys on the bench now?

Heck we couldn't force a number of up or down votes on judges when we had the majority before. Now Mitch McConnell is going to be able to do it all by himself? As long as there are some spineless RINOs and a huge number of Dems whose mantra is SAY NO TO THE GOP we might as well admit the Dems have much more power than they should in this regard.

that the Democratics really have more power than they should, just that the far, far left has much, much more power within the Democratic Party than they should. which amounts to the same thing, I suppose.

we had the ability to schedule Judiciary confirmation votes, and actually confirm, the three W.D. Michigan nominees in the previous Senate. Our Senate leadership simply didn't do it.

Answer: they actually fight for what they believe.

Right now, we are nearing the date by which some Supreme Court declaring homosexual marriage a Constitutional right. It could be in five years, or fifteen, but it is highly probable.

Given this threat, it has not occurred to a single "conservative" member of the Senate to grill any potential Supreme Court nominee about homosexual marriage in exactly the same way liberals such as Leahy and Specter grill nominees about abortion.

The country was has a continuous leftward drift precisely because both the liberal and conservative movements have leaders that are far to the left of their respective memberships. The country will only turn to the right when rank-and-file conservatives demand conservatives lead conservative organizations.