No Judges Confirmed This Week (first post of the new Congress)

[cotton1706]

This will be a weekly post.

Count remains at 85 judges confirmed.

53 District Court judges

30 Circuit Court judges

2 Supreme Court justices

All previous judicial nominations expired at the end of the last Congress and must be renominated. Those that already made it through committee should move quickly to the floor again.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will now be chaired by Lindsay Graham and has three new members (Hatch and Flake are gone): Josh Hawley of MO, Marsha Blackburn of TN and Joni Ernst of IA. So it will be 12-10 Republican.

The committee has already scheduled hearings for Jan 15-16 for William Barr, nominated to be Attorney General, so look for early fireworks.

Judicial hearings should be shortly after that.

Also, two Republican senators have announced their retirement: Lamar Alexander of TN and Pat Roberts of KS. Both were primaried in 2014 and didn't do as well as expected so the writing was on the wall for them.

[Impy]

No Flake on the committee is big, but at 12-10 one jerk could still leave a turd in the punch bowl, unless the chairman can break an 11-11 tie.

[FLT-bird]

Flake is gone. Time for the Turtle to ram through a bunch of judges.

[Ann Archy]

YOU SLOW WITTED, SLOW FOOTED PUBBIES are USELESS!! START WORKING!!

[taterjay]

Pat Roberts will be 83 soon. I think the writing is on the wall for him regardless of his vote count in 2014.

[Zenjitsuman]

McTurdle never gavelled out so PDJT never had a chance once again to make recess appointments.

McTurdle is not PDJT’s friend. He doesn’t stick up for him and end the witch hunt. McConnell doesn’t suspend rules making judges, ambassador appointments. Where is the special prosecutor so all Hillary’s crimes can be prosecuted, and all the deep state creeps like Strzok , Page, go to jail?

[Captain Jack Aubrey]

I believe that everyone has to be renominated and be voted on by committee before there can be a senate vote.

[BobL]

For what it’s worth, Romney learned a tough lesson in trying to take over as the biggest Republican dick in the Senate...as his hit piece on Trump went over like a lead balloon. I suspect that a lot of people he knows and trusts had a few choice words for him, in addition to Trump’s entire base.

So, Romney’s big ‘backtrack’ last week was to promise to vote for the Wall, which, I also take to mean (hopefully) that he won’t be giving us problems with judges. If that is indeed true, then our 53 Republican Senators should be able to steamroll a lot of judges through, very, very, quickly. I hope!

[Ann Archy]

THANKS....I had no idea of that!! Hugh Hewitt said he would gavel out at 11:50 and the new one wouldn’t be gaveled in until noon!!

[damper99]

McTurtle will slow walk the nominees again, and at the end of 2019 there will be a bigger backlog of judges. There isn’t enough time on the senate calendar to allow floor 30 hours for each nominee as well as the other business. Mitch is trying to hold off Trumph appointees so that he can pass open appointments to Schumer once he gets to be Majority Leader.