James M. Talent: “I want to place this debate in historical context. The tradition of the Senate has been to confirm judicial nominations…”

“I want to place this debate in historical context. The tradition of the Senate has been to confirm judicial nominations of the President if the nominees were competent, if they were qualified, if they were honest, if they had a record and background in the law, in the practice of law or on the bench or in academia, that suggested they could live up to the standards of the judiciary. If they did, they were confirmed and confirmed without having to answer questions that nobody ever has had to answer and would usurp and undermine the executive branch and the Solicitor General's Office if they had to answer it. Under those standards, hundreds of people in Miguel Estrada's circumstances have been confirmed without even any controversy, much less a filibuster, and everybody here knows it. You can always invent a reason to be opposed to somebody. Senators on the other side have been good at doing that with regard to Miguel Estrada, but he ought to be confirmed. At least he ought to have a vote, if we are going to follow the traditions of the Senate. Now those traditions have broken down to the point we not only are voting not to confirm people, we are not even allowing a vote. We have Senators conducting a filibuster on somebody because they suspect they might disagree with his jurisprudence.”