Political Quotes

“I will continue to try here, and I thank the Senate majority leader for his patience. This is really not a matter of fairness to the President but fairness to the American people. As my colleague Senator Hirono pointed out, this is a matter of justice delayed is justice denied. We have judicial emergencies--many on our list--that have not been filled. As Senator Schumer pointed out, this is about comparing what has been done on the workload of this Congress to any previous Congress on the confirmation of judges, and we are dead last as far as action that has been taken. I think the critical number is the number of vacancies. Compare the number of vacancies. When the Republicans took the majority, there were 43 vacancies in our courts. That number has almost doubled to 79 vacancies. When we take a look at the pace of confirmation--because we could say maybe there were a lot that had to be taken up over a President's term. But, as Senator Schumer pointed out, there have been only 17 judges confirmed to date. That is one of the lowest numbers in the modern history of our country. In the last year of President Bush's administration, in the same period of time of that 2-year cycle, 68 judges had been confirmed by a Democratically controlled Senate. What makes matters more difficult for the American people to understand is that 20 judicial nominations have currently passed the Senate Judiciary Committee.…”