Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Reid’s Promise   [Ed Whelan]

In a Senate floor colloquy yesterday with Republican leader Mitch McConnell, majority leader Harry Reid promised that “I will do everything within my power to get three judges approved to our circuits before the Memorial Day recess.” 

We’ll see.  This is the same Reid, after all, who promised in February 2007 that he would do his “very best” on judicial confirmations to “at least meet the standards of Congresses similarly situated as ours.”  In the last two years of the Clinton administration, a Republican-controlled Senate confirmed 15 appellate-court nominees.  So far, in these last two years of the Bush administration, a Democrat-controlled Senate has confirmed only seven.

This is also the same Reid who assured his Republican colleagues that the Fifth Circuit nomination of Leslie Southwick would be confirmed by the Memorial Day recess in 2007, but who then joined the vicious smear campaign that the Left launched against Southwick and tried to filibuster his nomination.  Southwick was ultimately confirmed, over Reid’s no vote, in late October 2007, nearly five months after the promised date.  

04/16 05:08 PMShare