WOIFM

Federalist Society - the Cabal Convenes

Last night I attended the 15th Annual Convention of the Federalist Society - what some liberals actually call "the conservative cabal" - to hear Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao speak.

Cheney opened up with a bang. He said of Saturday Night Live comic Darrell Hammond, who does frequent Cheney impersonations,

He's got the mannerisms down, he's got the voice pretty well, but he'll never quite capture the real me. You see, you just can't fake charisma.

That line, of course, brought the house down. But then Cheney turned to more serious issues, the current war against terrorism and the historically unprecedented failure of the Democrat-controlled Senate to confirm Bush judicial nominees.

In 1998, there were only 85 vacant judgeships, a rate of about 10%, according to the American Judicature Society. President Clinton had only offered nominations for 41 of those posts, and then had the nerve to use his State of the Union address to lambaste the Senate for its supposed inaction. Senator Patrick Leahy famously intoned,

Any week in which the Senate does not confirm three judges is a week in which the Senate is failing to address the vacancy crisis. Any fortnight in which we have gone without a judicial confirmation hearing marks 2 weeks in which the Senate is falling further behind.

Now that Senator Leahy is in charge of scheduling those hearings, how is he handling the crisis?

Today, there are 107 vacancies in the Federal courts -- 75 in the district courts and 32 in the appellate courts. And as of today, only 4 of the 29 judicial nominations sent to the Senate since early May have had a hearing. Only three have been confirmed.

That data comes from an August 1, 2001 column by the Free Congress Foundation's John Nowacki. Not much has changed since then - the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, for example, currently has nine judges, one of whom is about to retire. There are sixteen seats in the Sixth Circuit. That means we will soon have a vacancy rate of 50% for a single appellate court. The President has nominated six candidates for these seats, but the Senate has not had a single hearing on any of them. Unthinkable!

The rank hypocrisy of the Senate Democrats on judicial nominations must end, and must end now. As soon as the Senate resumes a normal schedule, it must immediately move to hearings on these nominees and floor votes as quickly as can be scheduled. Anything less is a betrayal of the nation and a deprivation of justice to its citizens.