Orrin Hatch: “I appreciate my colleague not objecting, and I will limit myself to about half the time that he has taken this morning…”

“I appreciate my colleague not objecting, and I will limit myself to about half the time that he has taken this morning just out of courtesy to him. I know Tom Griffith. We all know Tom Griffith. Tom Griffith was general counsel of the Senate. He served the Senate well. He did it in a nonpartisan way, even though he is a Republican. He helped all of us during the impeachment. Both sides acknowledge that he was terrific. He has all the academic and legal credentials necessary to fulfill this position. He is a person who is a consensus builder, someone who tries to get along with everybody and who, I think, will be perfect on this particular court. So I hope everybody will vote for Tom. He is a member of our family. He served us all. As a general rule, in the past, people who have served us such as Tom Griffith has would pass this body 100 to zip. Unfortunately, we have had some very forceful partisan politics rear its ugly head in some of these judgeship issues, and from time to time it may have been on both sides, but in this particular case it has been all on one side. I get a little tired of hearing the same arguments over and over again. The fact is, when President Bush 1 left office there were 54 holdovers with the Democrats in control of the Senate, and he only served 4 years. One could imagine how many there would have been if he served 8 years.…”