TRAIN WRECK

Today's NYT has an article about President Bush's nominations for the two remaining, statutorily allowed seats on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. Here's the quote that should catch your eye:

During the eight years when President Bill Clinton was in office, Senate Republicans insisted the court's workload was so light there was no need for it to be filled to its 12-member capacity

The Times is actually giving a polite paraphrase of what was actually said during the Clinton years. Here's a quote from a March 21, 1997 article in the Legal Intelligencer, which, incidentally, carries the title, "Senate Approves First Judge in Five Months." The background is that Merrick Garland had just been approved for the DC Circuit Court, 1 1/2 years after the nomination hit the Senate.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.[. . .] argued that the 11th seat on the D.C. Circuit should not be filled because the caseload was the lowest of the 12 circuits.

In a letter to colleagues, he said that filling the seat "would be to rip off, to the tune of over $ 1 million a year ... the taxpayers of this country."

On the floor, he said it would be a particular waste of taxpayer funds at a time the Senate is seeking a balanced budget.

A furious Hatch rose and denounced what he called the "mini-rebellion" by his own party and said no one in the Senate had fought harder than he to balance the budget. He offered to meet outside with anyone who questioned his integrity on that point and he pronounced: "Playing politics with judges is not fair. I'm sick of it."

This exchange puts Hatch in a relatively good light (he's sometimes willing to take on his own party members when he thinks that they're politicizing the judicial selection process, according to his view of what it means to politicize the process), and it calls into question the claim that the Times makes today that "Republicans" argued that the seats on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals did not need to be filled. Some Republicans made that argument and they blocked judges ostensibly for that reason. In fact, Senator Sessions called the seats a "rip off." Earlier in the article, Trent Lott is also associated with the view that the seats are unnecessary. I wonder if their claim will survive the current nominations.