Political Quotes

“Let us bring the nomination up. The irony is, you know and I know, with her qualifications, anybody would be embarrassed to vote against her because there would be no way they could explain back home how a woman, one of the most qualified nominees to come before the Senate for a Federal court nominated by any President, Republican or Democrat, is held up. I say to my friend from California, who has worked so hard and so diligently, one-on-one with Members to get this moving, it is, unfortunately, part of a picture. I have this chart which shows now we have 99 vacancies. We will have more. The number of judges who have been confirmed in the 105th Congress--when we first put this chart together, we wanted to show the vacancies on this side. I see my friend from Maryland, too. I will show him, too. We wanted to show the vacancies confirmed on the other side. We could not see the number that have been confirmed, so we put in this magnifying glass. I feel like Sherlock Holmes with my little magnifying glass going down. There are 99 vacancies, and down here, two being confirmed. We have had more vacancies this year than we have had judicial confirmations in the U.S. Senate. Maybe we can shave a day off each one of these recesses and confirm some judges during that time. We have not had time to do much else. We ought to at least confirm those.”