TIME TO SHUT IT DOWN:

Much More Democratic Obstruction: Democrats move to kill an entire slate of Bush nominees. (Byron York, March 20, 2003, National Review)

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 was an extraordinary move on the part of Levin and Stabenow, a kind of Wednesday-night massacre that sent Republicans scrambling to research whether such wholesale obstruction had any precedent in Senate history, and what a GOP response might be.

The move is all the more remarkable because much of the Sixth Circuit is in what the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts calls a "judicial emergency." The court normally has 16 members, but half of those seats are now empty.

The GOP really has to bring the hammer down, ignore the blue slips in committee and make the Democrats filibuster Estrada full-time and stop Senate business in a time of war. What's the point of fighting in Iraq if you're going to surrender constitutional prerogatives at home? Posted by Orrin Judd at March 20, 2003 12:07 PM