It's not so much that any nominee of color should get a pass, it's just a bit hypocritical not to give them the same advantage they would have gotten, say, applying for addmission to the University of Michigan.

Frankly, if they want to oppose conservatives for being conservative, they should just say so and not look for other excuses. A nominee's politics are a perfectly legitimate basis to support or oppose him.

Doug-- I'm not sure what your point is. Of course Estada and Brown are being opposed for their rightwing politics-- Democrats have been clear on that point. Both are considered far right of even most of Bush's already rightwing average nominee.

So why shouldn't Dems oppose them as much as they oppose Pickering or other conservative nominees.

If they want the same advantage they'd get applying for UMich, then let them apply for UMich, or some other equivalent situation.

It's very odd to read the flow of the comments after the statistical comment utterly destroyed the original post. I notice that the blogger herself got the rock outta Dodge.

To quote a subsequent commenter: "The Party In Power will always accuse the Party Out Of Power of doing the exact thing The Party In Power did when it was the Part Out Of Power. If the Party In Power did not do the thing that it is accusing The Party Out of Power of doing, it is only because they never thought of it, or it wasn't legal at the time."

For example, seems the main beef with Estrada was "We need to know more about him. We need to see confidential memos to his boss of the sort that has never been required of any other nominee."

Doug- the beef with Estrada was that everyone knew that Estrada was rightwing, but the White House was sitting on the evidence, namely the legal memos Estrada had written that people knew would reveal that rightwing agenda.

The White House was playing a pretty underhanded game with Estrada. They claimed his experience made him a great candidate for the Appeals Court, but refused to reveal the work he had done that reflected his work from that experience.

So the Dems called him on the attempt to cover up and hide his rightwing history.

Perhaps if the rejected Bush judicial nominees were applying to attend UMich Law School or any of the nation's other fine law schools, they might actually learn something about the LAW and recant their laughable beliefs.

Did anyone listen to the Brown confirmation hearing? Whoo! What a loon!

I wrote about Janet Rogers Brown a couple of days ago. She's responsible for a poorly-reasoned opinion in a California custody case. The Feminist Majority opposes her for her extremely conservative views.

The Republicans were in the Senate majority and used their committee majorities to obstruct certain Clinton nominees, as all Senate majorities have from time immemorial. When nominees were able to gain committee approval, they went straight to the floor and got an up or down vote. The Democrats are in the >minority

The Republicans were in the Senate majority and used their committee majorities to obstruct certain Clinton nominees, as all Senate majorities have from time immemorial. When nominees were able to gain committee approval, they went straight to the floor and got an up or down vote.

This isn't even close to accurate. Some of it is just misleading, other parts are false.

Among the misleading parts is the "time immemorial" point. It's pretty clear from comparative studies that the sheer magnitude of the obstruction under Clinton was unprecedented. We're talking scores of nominees who never got the sacred "up or down" vote, including at least one who was nominated during Clinton's first term and whose nomination finally expired at the end of Clinton's second term.

Also, the Sentate Judiciary Committee majority never voted down a single Clinton nominee. All of those scores of nominees who didn't get a vote either passed the committee and were never brought to the floor, or Hatch never allowed even the committee to have an "up or down vote" (by far the more common circumstance). Bunches never even had a hearing before the committee. At least when the Dems ran the show, they had the guts to vote down Pickering and Owen.

Then there's the blue slip issue: Hatch allowed one Senator to hold up a nomination, even if the Senate majority would have confirmed. If a 40-plus filibuster is wrong, how can a one-man block be OK? Jesse Helms singlehandedly stopped every single one of Clinton's 4th Circuit appointees from N. Carolina. When the Republicans took over the Senate this year, Hatch decided to change the rules, so that one Senator couldn't do that any more, thus stopping Democrats from states with one Senator from each party from pulling the same stunt. Sauce for the goose, anyone? And even then, Hatch decided not to follow his own new rule, where both home-state Senators can block an appointee, once the two Dems from Michigan decided to withhold blue slips to protest the two-year-plus failure of the Republican Senate to vote on Clinton nominee Helene White of Michigan; ditto with California nominee Carolyn Kuhl, opposed by both California Senators.

As for filibusters, the Republicans tried those under Clinton, though they didn't really have to because they controlled whether judges even were brought to the floor at all. Senate Majority Leader Frist, who was on the talk-show circuit just this past weekend complaining about these "unprecedented" filibusters, voted against cloture on Clinton nominees.

It got so bad that Chief Justice Rehnquist, in his annual "state of the judiciary" letter, chastised Sen. Hatch for failing to hold votes on so many nominees. There were more than 100 vacancies, causing declarations of judicial emergencies on a number of circuit courts. Now, when there are fewer than half that many vacancies and Dems are holding up a handful of the hundreds of Bush nominees, the Republicans claim there's a crisis. According to this thinking, the Dems have an obligation to let Bush take full advantage of the vacancies held open--often for four, six, even eight years--by the Republicans by not blocking any of his nominees, no matter how radical.

Doesn't work that way, at least if the opposition has any spine.

Seekers of truth invariably turn to lies.