Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I appreciate the kind words and the insight from Chairman Leahy and his leadership on trying to speed up the confirmation process on a whole host of judges. I have a lot of respect for my colleague from Iowa, but I take exception with a couple of things he said. No. 1, he compared the number of nominations during the second Bush 4 years with the first 4 Obama years and said that the Senate was more cooperative now than it was then. Clearly it was apples and oranges. We know--almost any schoolkid in America now knows--the dysfunction of the Senate in terms of the minority party blocking all kinds of things, from medium- to low-level Federal appointments to the executive branch, to district court judges, to legislation. So I think Senator Leahy has addressed that very aptly, and I don't need to go into detail there. Senator Leahy also has spoken to the two public criticisms--shallow and vacuous that they are--of Jeffrey Helmick. The one on him representing terrorists, I am not a lawyer, but I know that when a Federal judge asks a lawyer to represent somebody, the lawyer does it, as Jeffrey Helmick did. And, as Senator Leahy said on the ethics issue, the Ohio Court of Appeals said that Mr. Helmick should be commended. The supreme court agreed unanimously that the letter they talked about was a client secret and that Mr. Helmick acted in good faith. So those criticisms don't really stand the test of time in that way.…”