Political Quotes

“I appreciate the work Senator Warner is doing, along with Senator Hagan and Senator Udall. I came to the Senate 3rac{1}{2} years ago. I am personally not a lawyer, and I have, obviously, never sat as a judge, but I understand the custom here is that, typically, if there is a Senator from a State with the same party affiliation as the President, that Senator makes a recommendation to the President for a Federal judgeship or a district Federal judgeship, and normally the President will accept that. My senior Senator, my colleague from Ohio, is a Republican. So rather than block him out of the appointment process, the confirmation process, I asked him to join with me and we put together a committee for the northern district in Ohio for a judge vacancy. Actually, there were two, one in the northern district and we did one in the southern district. We had a panel of, I believe 17 people. The northern district panel was actually majority Republican. I am a Democrat; the President is obviously a Democrat. The southern district was a majority Democrat, barely. The panel did lengthy interviews of about 20 potential judges each--Federal judges--for the one vacancy in the northern district and the one in the southern district. In these interviews were people who were active in their communities, who donated their time and spent 2 or 3 full days.…”