Political Quotes

“I thank my colleagues from Rhode Island and Iowa for their cooperation in establishing the speaking order this evening. I would like to speak for a moment about the vote we just cast. We just confirmed Judge Wilkins to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. I voted against this judge. In doing that, I joined my Republican colleagues for one simple reason. Several years ago, when President George W. Bush was in the White House, he nominated an eminently qualified lawyer named Peter Keisler who had bipartisan support. He was not a partisan hack; he was a true craftsman in the law. He was someone whom no one had any ideological opposition to, but he was blocked by the Senate Democrats at that time for the simple fact, based on the simple reason, that according to the Senate Democrats the DC Circuit's caseload was not sufficiently robust to justify the filling of this position. Since that time, not very many things have changed. Since that time, if anything, the DC Circuit's caseload per judge has remained about the same or some would argue has gone down a little, depending on which metric you use. One change is that we have now a Democratic President in the White House instead of a Republican President in the White House. Suddenly my friends across the aisle have forgotten about the caseload-based arguments they used a few years ago to keep Peter Keisler off the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.…”