The Nation | Blog | The Daily Outrage | Ari Berman

Just yesterday Bush renominated twenty failed judicial nominees, including seven of the ten that Democrats rejected in his first term. …

Amidst this aggressive disinformation campaign, you’d think Democrats were impeding Senate business the same way Republicans shut down the Congress in 1995. In fact, Democrats blocked only ten of the president’s 229 first-term judicial nominees. In contrast, Republicans stopped a full third of Bill Clinton’s appeals court nominees from 1995 and 2000 and derailed a total of sixty overall judicial appointments, six times the damage Democrats have done. Bush appointees now account for 23.2 percent of all federal judges and 20 percent of all Circuit Court judges across the country. The vacancy rate on the federal courts is at its lowest level in 16 years.