-Caveat Lector- WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! Judging Senate Democrats ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- © 2001 WorldNetDaily.com As important as President Bush's legislative agenda may be, he will soon begin creating his real legacy by sending judicial nominees to the Senate. The focus will then be on Senate Democrats to see which of two personalities will emerge. Balancing the scales of justice will certainly require a lot of work. President Clinton appointed 375 activist judges, and today more than 54 percent of full-time federal judges are Democrat appointees. Worse than the partisan division, however, is the philosophical breakdown. While nearly every Democrat appointee is predictably an activist judge, at least one-third of Republican appointees unfortunately also fall into this category. Hence, among full-time federal judges today, activists outnumber their restrained colleagues by more than two-to-one. In addition, the first year of a new president's term is comparatively unproductive in this area. While the Senate has confirmed an average of 49 judges per year over the last two decades, new presidents appoint an average of just 25 judges in their first year. Data from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts indicate that today 96 full-time judicial positions are vacant, the highest level in more than three years. President Bush has signaled he is serious about closing this gap by appointing judges who "will interpret the law, not legislate from the bench." But since judicial appointments require not only a presidential nomination but also Senate approval, the question is whether Senate Democrats will take a hard-line partisan approach to judicial confirmations. The answer to that question depends on which Senate Democrat personality will emerge in the months ahead. We might see the Confirmation Democrats. They pushed for more confirmations, arguing that vacancies undermined the cause of justice. In March 2000, for example, Senate Democratic Leader Tom Dashcle, D-S.D., said that the 74 vacancies existing then (23 percent fewer than today) amounted to a "judicial emergency" and said that "we have to get on with a lot more confirmations." He said that, no matter which party controlled the White House, Democrats would "not allow the politics of a national election to dictate the number of confirmations." As reported in the March 14, 1997, Chicago Tribune, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said that "promptly filling the judicial vacancies" is "giving the American public its due. … This means confirming judges, the people who make the system work, sooner rather than later and keeping politics out of the judiciary." In June 1998, with just 72 vacancies (25 percent fewer than today), Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., called for more Judiciary Committee nomination hearings and said, "I hope that the Judiciary Committee and the Senate will proceed to consider and confirm judicial nominees more promptly." A few months later, when vacancies had dropped to 69, he called the situation a "judicial vacancy crisis." Leftist interest groups echoed the call of their Senate Democrat allies. Michelle Alexander of the American Civil Liberties Union said on the Jan. 28, 2000, edition of CNN's "Burden of Proof" that the 74 vacancies at the time were a "serious problem." Writing in the San Francisco Chronicle in July 1999, Nan Aron of the Alliance for Justice condemned what she called "an unprecedented 72 vacancies on federal courts right now." In its 1994 annual report, the Alliance's Judicial Selection Project said that 60 vacancies (nearly 40 percent fewer than today) was "an unacceptably high number." And E. Joshua Rosenkranz of the Brennan Center for Justice wrote in the Jan. 12, 1998, edition of USA Today that the 83 vacancies at that time (14 percent fewer than today) were "a crisis of constitutional dimension." On the other hand, we might see the Obstruction Democrats. While Democrats are technically in the Senate minority today, they have in the past used every tool available to the minority to limit Republican presidents' impact on the judiciary. As Congressional Quarterly reported in 1985, for example, Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., "threatened to hold up all nominations" of President Reagan until the Republican Senate majority slowed down the confirmation process. The tactic worked. Democrats have also pursued filibusters against Republican judicial nominees, a strategy perhaps presaged by the 58-42 confirmation of Attorney General John Ashcroft since "cloture," or cutting off a filibuster, requires 60 votes. Five cloture votes occurred on Republican judicial nominees while Democrats ran the Senate, with an average of 33 senators voting to sustain the filibusters. In contrast, three cloture votes occurred on Democrat judicial nominees while Republicans ran the Senate, with an average of just 13 Senators voting to sustain the filibusters. In fact, Democrats have filibustered Republican nominees to all three levels of the federal judiciary. It appears Senate Democrats may be suffering from Multiple Political Personality Disorder. Which one will emerge in the months ahead -- Confirmation Democrats or Obstruction Democrats, Hypocrite Democrats or Partisan Democrats? Stay tuned. *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. 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