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Thursday, March 20, 2003
There is some good news today.
Sens. Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow are doing their job.
Although it was overshadowed by the beginning of war, on Capitol Hill Wednesday there was a major escalation in the conflict between Senate Democrats and the White House over the president's judicial nominees
The escalation had nothing to do with the ongoing Democratic filibuster over appeals-court candidate Miguel Estrada. Instead, it involved a Democratic decision to block, and, at least for the moment, kill a total of four Bush nominees to the federal courts of appeals.
Acting in concert, Michigan Democratic Sens. Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow told the Judiciary Committee they will block the nominations of Richard Griffin, David McKeague, Susan Bieke Neilson, and Henry Saad to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. In addition, Levin and Stabenow said they will block the nomination of Thomas Ludington to a seat on the U.S. District Court. That means the two senators are attempting to kill every Bush nominee from the state of Michigan.
Levin and Stabenow stopped the nominations by returning negative blue slips, which are the documents in which senators indicate approval or disapproval of judicial nominees from their home states.
Blue slips are a Senate custom with a long and controversial history, but both parties concede it is nearly impossible for a nominee of either party to win confirmation over the objections of both of his or her home-state senators. That means the nominations of Griffin, McKeague, Neilson, Saad, and Ludington are effectively dead.
It gets better:
The Levin/Stabenow maneuver is the culmination of a conflict that has been years in the making and involves Democratic accusations that Republicans mistreated appeals court nominees selected by President Clinton.
When President Bush took office, Levin and Stabenow demanded that he renominate two Clinton appeals court nominees from Michigan, Helene White and Kathleen McCree Lewis, whose nominations had not been acted on by the GOP-controlled Senate. White is married to Sen. Levin's cousin.
In a letter sent yesterday to White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, Levin, and Stabenow wrote, "On more than one occasion, the White House counsel has stated that some nominees during the previous administration were wrongly treated....We have said repeatedly that it would be wrong for the president to seek confirmation of his nominees to the Michigan seats on the Sixth Circuit before the acknowledged wrong was corrected."
The White House has refused the demand, saying that it would be an unprecedented surrender of the president's constitutional authority to nominate federal judges.
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