Political Quotes

“I am here on the anniversary of the President's first nominations to the circuit court to, once again, focus the Senate on what really is a great obstruction of justice that is occurring as a result of the actions within the Judiciary Committee. We have seen the first 11 nominees the President put up for the circuit court--which is the appellate court in this country at the Federal level, and then you have the Supreme Court, obviously. We have 11 nominees the President put forward. Three were moved. But they were three holdovers from the prior administration. The first original, if you will, Bush nominees have not even had a hearing. If they were eight people who had very little to account for, if they were people who were not considered well qualified, if they were people who had clouds hanging over their nominations, that would be one thing. But not one of them has received anything but well qualified, and the vast majority were well qualified by Senator Leahy's and the Judiciary Committee's standard, which is the American Bar Association, which is not necessarily friendly to Republican nominees for the court. We have a situation where we have preeminent jurists and litigators who are being held in committee for a year without a hearing, and without explanation.”