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."

Rand Paul gives the Senate a long talk -- and then a vote: Joe Frolik  (Cleveland Plain Dealer [OH] , 03/12/13)
By Joe Frolik, Chief editorial writer, The Plain Dealer: "the Senate failed to end a silent "filibuster" against Caitlin Halligan, a Xenia-born attorney ... while a majority of the Senate wanted to confirm her to a court with four vacancies, enough Republicans -- including Paul and Ohio's Rob Portman -- again managed to block a final vote.... If that's a libertarian approach -- put out an idea, let the market decide and move on -- then hurray for Paul. Now if only he can convince his colleagues that Halligan, Richard Cordray and dozens of other nominees and ideas trapped in Senate limbo deserve the same."

Judges Are (Nearly) Forever (Washington Monthly, 03/12/13)
Ed Kilgore: "the Halligan filibuster is part of a larger pattern which is in danger of leaving Barack Obama with a significant lighter footprint on the federal judiciary than his two terms in office would be expected to merit. ... Now that conservative judges (at least at the top of the judicial pyramid) have lost most of their inhibitions about overturning precedents, they provide an exceptional avenue for the achievement and consolidation of right-wing policy goals. ... Conservatives understand judicial appointments are especially valuable in no small part because they endure. Progressives need to play catch-up"

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."

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."

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."

Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney, 3/11/2013 (The White House, 03/11/13)
"the President’s schedule this week, including his visits to Capitol Hill ... While he’s there he will want to discuss a range of priorities ... the need to do something about the pace of nominations being confirmed and considered in the Senate -- judicial nominations, in particular"

Editorial: Judicial vacancies should be filled (Reno Gazette-Journal [NV] , 03/10/13)
"For more than a year, the nomination of District Judge Elissa Cadish to fill a vacancy in the federal court for Nevada remained in limbo, held up by U.S. Sen. Dean Heller because of an answer she gave to a question on gun rights long before here nomination.... For more than a year, the nomination of District Judge Elissa Cadish to fill a vacancy in the federal court for Nevada remained in limbo, held up by U.S. Sen. Dean Heller because of an answer she gave to a question on gun rights long before here nomination. Cadish was a victim of the newest litmus test for judicial nominees — blind fealty to the interpretation of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that is in vogue today. She’s not the only judicial nominee to fail the test. Earlier last week, Senate Republicans filibustered the nomination of former New York solicitor general Caitlin Halligan ... The true victims of all of this are, of course, those Americans seeking justice from an overloaded judicial system. And the fault lies squarely on the Senate’s shoulders. As long as the president’s nominees are unable to win approval, justice will be denied because justice is delayed."

Tradition trumps Cadish (Las Vegas Review-Journal, 03/10/13)
Steve Sebelius, Review-Journal political columnist: "Perhaps the saddest aspect of Clark County District Court Judge Elissa Cadish's failed nomination to the federal bench is that nothing has changed. A single senator may still block a judicial nomination by withholding his signature from a "blue slip," ... Cadish never got even a hearing, despite more than a year of waiting. Why? Because U.S. Sen. Dean Heller objected to her stance on gun rights. ... most important, she said in the 2008 questionnaire and after the matter became controversial that she would enforce the law as interpreted by the Supreme Court. That's the perfect -- and the only -- answer for a United States District Court judge. Heller could have accepted that answer. It was good enough for me, a gun owner whose views of the Second Amendment make Heller seem like a liberal. ... Instead, Heller refused to reconsider and Nevada lost a judge whom 88 percent of lawyers in the Review-Journal's biennial Judging the Judges survey said should be retained.... his intransigence denied Nevada an extremely well-qualified judge, at a time when they're badly needed. ... , another nominee - Jennifer Dorsey - has yet to have a hearing. Once again, Heller has delayed signing a blue slip for her. His staff says he's "continuing to review" Dorsey's nomination."

Fixing the filibuster: Recent reforms will curtail abuse, and they should go further — but no so far that they invalidate an important Senate tradition (Baltimore Sun, 03/10/13)
Ronald Weich: "the Senate minority blocked indefinitely the nomination of a highly qualified woman, Caitlin Halligan, to the D.C. Court of Appeals, the second most important court in the country and one to which the Senate has yet to confirm an Obama nominee. ... The recently adopted resolutions are well-designed to combat these types of routine obstructionism. First, they give the majority leader new tools to move more quickly through the cloture process, especially when he or she is working in tandem with the minority leader. Second, they limit post-cloture debate on sub-Cabinet nominations and eliminate it with respect to federal District Court nominations. This will enable the majority leader to file cloture on nominations without losing days of Senate floor time to phantom opponents. ... There is more that could be done. For example, the confirmation reforms do not apply to nominees for federal appellate courts, such as Ms. Halligan"

White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler on Judicial Confirmation Process (The White House, 03/10/13)
“It used to be the case that with judges, for the most part, Washington functioned,” said White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler. “And that noncontroversial, good quality, fair-minded judges got confirmed in regular order.” “Even when we have a nominee for a circuit court that came from a Republican senator that was reported unanimously, it has taken almost a year to get that person confirmed,” said Ruemmler, the White House counsel.

Filibuster Reform is Not the Big Story for the DC Circuit Court (Washington Monthly, 03/09/13)
Ryan Cooper: "This is the critical issue when it comes to the DC Circuit Court. They have jurisdiction over the regulatory agencies, and the current conservative majority has become the key instrument in obstructing regulatory reform, especially Dodd-Frank. This was the focus of Haley Edwards’ blockbuster story in our latest issue:... And the behavior of these conservative jurists has become aggressively hackish ... this is the same court that just completely eviscerated the President’s power to make recess appointments (pending a Supreme Court decision).... if Dodd Frank and the rest of President Obama’s big first term achievements are to avoid being pecked to death, Democrats must fill those empty seats on the DC Circuit. That is the background reality that informs all this discussion about filibuster reform and the federal judiciary."

Editorial: Will of the Senate (Akron Beacon Journal [OH], 03/09/13)
"Two years ago, President Obama nominated Caitlin Halligan to sit on the federal court of appeals for the District of Columbia. Unfortunately, the Xenia native, former New York solicitor general and current general counsel for the Manhattan district attorney’s office has been the target of a filibuster. On Tuesday, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio and all but one of his Republican colleagues blocked a final vote on her nomination.... Many people may disagree with the argument she advanced. It hardly rates as radical or disqualifying. Anyway, the position didn’t belong to her. She represented her client, the state of New York, its elected attorney general. Halligan has an impressive, bipartisan array of supporters, including officials who served in the solicitor general’s office in the Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. She received the highest rating from the American Bar Association, no renegade outfit. More, the appeals bench could use the help, with four of 11 seats vacant. The Portman spokeswoman lamented the Obama White House choosing “to dismiss the will of the Senate.” Halligan already has a majority of the Senate on her side."

Cadish taken for a ride by Harry Reid (Las Vegas Review-Journal, 03/08/13)
Jane Ann Morrison blog: "Democratic Senate Majority Leader Reid did the right thing when he nominated Cadish early in 2012. She’s more than qualified to be a federal judge after more than seven years on the state bench, earning her plenty of rave reviews.... While I disagreed with Heller’s interpretation of what she scribbled on that form, based on the law at that time, I knew he was never going to budge. He’d look like a fool is if he did. Of course, he looked foolish when he initially blocked her without explaining why."