The Washington Times, in one of the more balanced articles on the confirmation battles that I've read, actually gives us some numbers to chew on. The most interesting are these: In the first 29 months of their respective presidency, Clinton had 22 Circuit Court Judges confirmed, while Bush has had 24 confirmed - a pretty fair correspondence; but, because of the number of nominations Bush has made, he's had a 53 percent confirmation rate so far, while Clinton's confirmation rate was 88 percent.

The one problem I have with the article is that it calls the unprecedented filibusters of Circuit Court Judges "unprecedented" filibusters. Why do they need the scare quotes? The filibusters are, in fact, unprecedented. I realize that whether an act is unprecedented depends on the relevant comparison, but the best comparison for these circuit court nominees pretty clearly seems to be previous circuit court nominees.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 9:21 AM