Down a judge and four years to trial in the Eastern District of North Carolina (Progressive Pulse [NC], 03/13/13)
Sharon McCloskey: "The court... has had an open seat on the bench since December 31, 2005 ... – the second longest vacancy in the federal courts. Since then there’s been little movement towards a nominee other than a short-lived effort in 2009. ... But courts can only go so long depending entirely on help from the senior judges, said Charles Hall from the AOC’s Office of Public Affairs. “Understaffing for years puts an extra burden on every case, but especially on civil cases for which there is no right to a speedy trial,” he added."

Scalia: Recuse or resign (The Hill, 03/13/13)
Brent Budowsky: "It would be constitutionally absurd for the high court to hold that corporations have a protected right to buy elections while individuals lack a protected right to vote in them. This contempt for “one person, one vote” is echoed in Senate filibusters aimed at “packing the court” by obstructing confirmation of judicial nominees. President Obama should offer nominees to fill ALL judicial vacancies by May 1. If filibustering senators obstruct confirmation, Senate rules should be changed. The decision of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals overturning presidential recess appointments should be ignored as precedent until vacancies are filled."

Editorial: Standing up, hiding behind (Tideland News [NC], 03/13/13)
"Mitch McConnell, was able to thwart an up-or-down vote on the nomination of Caitlin Halligan to a D.C. circuit court judge by simply threatening to filibuster. ... Simply invoking the rule of a 60-vote majority is nothing more than a way to ensure a legislative quagmire."

The Jacobins And The Judiciary (The Dish [Andrew Sullivan], 03/13/13)
"[T]here is a false equivalency here. No president should be required to rush all his judicial appointments in that recently rare window of controlling 60 votes in the Senate. He is not equally at fault here. This should be a steady, reasonable process – especially for utterly uncontroversial nominees. The American system requires some give-and-take, some acknowledgment that when you lose an election, you cooperate with the winner and take some responsibility for important institutions, like the federal courts. And yet this core conservative instinct to preserve the constitutional order and process has disappeared in the fanaticism of the current GOP. They are behaving like moody teenagers with grudges."

Stop blocking judicial nominees (Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier [IA], 03/13/13)
Christopher Schwartz: "Sen. Charles Grassley needs to stop the political games and confirm President Barack Obama’s well-qualified judicial nominees. Last Wednesday, Senate Republicans blocked a vote on a very qualified judicial nominee for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Caitlin Halligan. ... Every day there is a vacancy on a federal court, someone in America can’t have their rights protected.... What Grassley and the Republican senators did last week when they blocked Halligan’s confirmation was wrong. ... The D.C. circuit decides cases having to do with the balance of powers of the branches of government and decisions made by government agencies affecting issues like health care, national security, environmental rules, consumer protections and workplace safety. ... when the Senate refuses to fill one of the court’s four vacancies for political sake, we have a problem. ... Grassley, as the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, leads the charge in blocking Obama’s nominees. He needs to stop it, because our judicial nominations process is not a joke. It’s time our home-state senator takes this seriously, because right now he is seriously hurting Americans."

Preserve the integrity of our judiciary (Gazette [Cedar Rapids, IA], 03/13/13)
Donna Red Wing, executive director of One Iowa, Gazette Guest Columnist: "Unfortunately, there are those in Washington, D.C. who would rather play politics than preserve the integrity of our judiciary. Just last week Senate Republicans again blocked the confirmation of Caitlin Halligan to the D.C. Circuit ...diverse experiences from judges with different backgrounds both professionally and personally mean greater access to a fair and impartial judiciary that is receptive to the facts and arguments presented to them."

Ruling ensures minority tyranny (Politico, 03/12/13)
Prof. Herman Schwartz: "In January, judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia virtually eliminated the power given presidents by the Constitution to make recess appointments when Congress is not in session. Ignoring approximately 200 years of practice and explicit approval by presidents, the Senate and three other appellate courts, Chief Judge David Sentelle, and Judges Karen LeCraft Henderson and Thomas Griffith ruled that a president can make recess appointments only during the recesses at the end of the year ... The decision provides a judicial backstop for minority obstructionism, for it shuts down one of the few ways a president can fully staff his administration, even if with only temporary appointments. ... This decision does not come as a complete surprise. In an opinion last April involving a milk price regulatory system created in 1933, Sentelle and Judge Janice Rogers Brown condemned virtually all legislation regulating the economy as an unconstitutional infringement on economic liberty to satisfy “the public appetite for other people’s money.” They are not alone on that court in their views. Until February, when Sentelle retired, the nine active and four senior judges included nine Republican appointees, most of them from the far right of the political spectrum. These judges have made the court into a killing field for efforts to regulate the economy, engaging in what Washington Post columnist Steve Pearlstein has called a “judicial jihad.” ...With Sentelle’s retirement, there are four active GOP-appointed judges and three Democratic appointees, leaving four vacancies."

Editorial: Senators should have to filibuster with their words (Keene Sentinel [NH], 03/12/13)
"Once a rarity involving hours of debate on the Senate floor, filibustering today has become a common and ongoing means of shutting down business in Congress. With a two-thirds, or 60 vote, “cloture” required to end a filibuster, senators with enough support can simply block up-down votes on any range of issues (while moving on to other business) indefinitely. That’s been the case for several of the Obama administration’s nominations for key leadership posts in federal agencies and 32 pending judgeships. ... a confirmation vote for New York lawyer Caitlin Halligan to fill a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. was delayed with a filibuster by Republican senators who claim she’ll be an activist judge. Halligan has been waiting to get on the federal court since her 2010 nomination.... Democrats — including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who has blocked voting on a filibuster-related bill — and Republicans alike should stop taking advantage of filibusters and work together to make it a last-ditch practice, rather than a go-to delay tactic."

FOR OBAMA’S JUDGES, IT’S ALREADY LATE (New Yorker, 03/12/13)
Jeffrey Toobin: "senatorial entropy has taken an enormous toll on President Obama’s judicial appointments. ...Obama has failed to place even a single judge on the D.C. Circuit ... Halligan is impeccably qualified to be a judge ... “I don’t think any reasonable person would find anything about Caitlin Halligan that would constitute ‘extraordinary circumstances,’” Kathryn Ruemmler, the White House counsel, told me. “The idea that a position that you took as a public official on behalf of your client amounts to an extraordinary circumstance was pretty astonishing.” Judicial appointments represent one of the great missed opportunities of the Obama Presidency. ... since the 2010 midterm elections, Republicans have been at fault, almost entirely. ... Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, parcels out agreements to take votes just one or two judges at a time. “We are not hearing any opposition to the district court nominees,” Ruemmler said. “The process is just too slow.”"

Now the NRA can block judicial appointments?  (Progressive Pulse [NC], 03/12/13)
Sharon McCloskey: "Halligan is widely viewed by attorneys on both sides of the aisle as impeccably qualified to sit on the bench.”

Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney, 3/12/2013 (The White House, 03/12/13)
"[W]hen the President meets with Senate Democrats ... he will certainly discuss -- well, as I mentioned yesterday, he may bring up concerns he has about the unnecessary delays that have confronted our nominations, the historic delays. Just yesterday, I believe, the Senate finally confirmed someone to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals who was filibustered for something like 464 days. So you would think there must have been something disturbing about his nomination, that there must have been great opposition to it. Instead, he was voted and confirmed 91-0. That I think is emblematic of a problem that we have in the confirmation process."

Nevada's Ailing District Court (Progress Now Nevada blog, 03/11/13)
"Cadish had been waiting for a blue-slip from Senator Dean Heller for more than a year. ... Cadish's situation isn't unique Jennifer A. Dorsey another highly qualified female nominee is also waiting for her blue-slip from Sen. Heller. Dorsey was nominated at the same time as Gordon, who today will most likely be confirmed, yet is still five steps behind him in the nomination process. No reason has been given on why her nomination has been delayed, and she is just as qualified as Gordon. If Sen. Heller continues blocking every other qualified candidate from receiving hearings with the Senate Judiciary Committee, our state will end up with a judicial crisis and our right to a speedy trial will be jeopardized."

Cadish Out, Political Extremism In (McAfee’s Machinations: Taking the Constitution Seriously, 03/11/13)
Thomas McAffee, Professor of law at William Boyd School of Law at UNLV: "It’s undoubtedly a sign of the times that a perfectly well qualified nominee for a federal judgeship could be essentially vetoed by her home-state Senator for having once stated the “wrong” opinion on the nature of the right guaranteed by the Second Amendment. ...the vast majority of lawyers and judges would have given the same response that Judge Cadish did to the question she was posed; and the response pre-dated the very decision that Senator Heller apparently believes Judge Cadish is insufficiently committed to. The only reasonable explanation for Senator Heller’s stand is the rather ugly, extreme political partisanship that characterizes too much of recent political discourse."

Our View: Judicial filibuster shows same old Senate; The Republican minority continues to use the Senate rules to prevent appointments (Portland Press Herald [ME] , 03/11/13)
Editorial: "Halligan has strong legal credentials, including six years as New York state's solicitor general, and has argued 50 cases before the Supreme Court. But McConnell did not want to allow her nomination to come up for a vote, and all but one of his Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, voted with him, which prevented the Democrats from getting the 60 votes needed to end debate and leaves the seat on the court vacant. This means that in his fifth year in office, President Obama has not been able to name a single judge to this important court, which is run by conservative Bush appointees. It also means that the supposed reforms to the filibuster negotiated by McConnell and Democratic leader Harry Reid have not ended minority rule and dysfunction in the U.S. Senate.... Maine Sen. Susan Collins had a different rationale for her vote. She unearthed a 2006 letter signed by Democratic senators who opposed a Bush administration appointment to the court by saying that there were too many judges on it already. "My vote solely reflects my determination that this seat does not need to be filled by anyone," said Collins, a Republican. If Halligan were to be nominated for a different vacancy, "I would likely vote to confirm her." ... this kind of procedural gamesmanship made the last Congress one of the least effective and least popular in history."

False equivalency takes another hit (Daily Kos, 03/10/13)
By litho: "the Boston Globe calls out GOP obstructionism in the Senate, with particular emphasis on the broken judicial nomination process. Focusing in particular on the DC Court of Appeals, ... makes it clear that the degree of dysfunction is far worse today than it has ever been, and the reason for that dysfunction is the absolute refusal by the GOP to allow President Obama to govern."