Well, first off, the major issue I was ranting about had nothing to do with filibustered judges, although I do hold VERY strong opinions on that issue.
What I was referring to is the stalling tactic used against Judge Julia Scott Gibbons' nomination to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Her confirmation was delayed so that the Michigan Affirmative Action case could proceed without allowing her a say in the matter. Ted Kennedy (hic) received a memo from the NAACP asking him to delay her nomination for the explicit purpose of not allowing her to rule on the Michigan Affirmative Action case. The link I posted previously in this thread shows this memo in its original form.
She was eventually confirmed, but was stalled until the case had been ruled upon. Had she not been stalled, she would have ruled on that case, and the result would have likely been different. This is currently under investigation.
You were asking about statistics... To date, 63% of Bush's appellate judges have been confirmed this term whereas the norm for the last three presidents was 91%. Granted, this is appellate judges only, but that is the tactic the Democrats are using. They are not concerned about District Court judges, because as long as they can keep the appellate courts liberal, they can overrule a lower conservative courts. This keeps their numbers of confirmed judges skewed.
Furthermore, many of the judges that were not approved in the Clinton administration were nominated at the very end of his term. They were not stalled...there simply was not enough time to approve them.
By the way, here is a link to the Dept. of Justice. It is a statistical comparison between the last five administrations, and the approval rates of their nominations in the first two years of the administration. http://www.usdoj.gov/olp/2yearcomparison.pdf
Total nominations by Clinton were 140, of which 126 were approved (90%). Total nominations by Bush were 131, of which 100 were approved (76%).
One more doc you might be interested in is also from the Dept. of Justice website: http://www.usdoj.gov/olp/returnednoms.pdf
This shows that Clinton had total of 14 nominees returned during his first 2 years, whereas Bush had 36 returned.
-=CE=-
