Tom Harkin: “an issue I will be talking about every day is the issue of judgeships and the fact that we still have our judges bottled…”

“an issue I will be talking about every day is the issue of judgeships and the fact that we still have our judges bottled up, especially Bonnie Campbell, who has now been waiting 217 days to be reported out of the committee. Yet we just had some judges approved this week who were nominated in July, had their hearing in July. They were approved. But Bonnie Campbell still sits in the Judiciary Committee. It is not right, it is not fair to her, it is not fair for our judicial system. Bonnie Campbell has all of the qualifications to be a judge on the Eighth Circuit. A former attorney general of Iowa, she did an outstanding job there. Since 1995, she has been the first and only director of the Office of Violence Against Women in the Department of Justice which was created by the Violence Against Women Act of 1994. Again, she has done an outstanding job. There has been some good news. During that period of time, domestic violence against women, in fact, has decreased. But the facts are we have a long way to go. In 1998, American women were the victims of 876,340 acts of domestic violence. Domestic violence accounted for 22 percent of violent crimes against women. During those same years, children under 12 lived in 43 percent of the households where domestic violence occurred. We have to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act. Last week, the House passed by 415-3 the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act.”