column for the washington post saying it s basically no hold s barred. so look everybody talks about this in the language of principle when a republican is nominated judges, democrats are for the important institution of the filibuster about republicans think it s outrageous and when democrats are nominating judges, republicans are for these great, important institutions like giving home state senators vetoes over nominees and democrats think it s outrageous. anybody who speaks in the language of principle about this issue is lying to you. and the only law there used to be a set of norms that governed these nominations and they have all broken down one by one and i think part of what
decided by the district courts or the courts of appeal. the supreme court, every year only hears and decides about 80 cases. so that just tells you that most of these cases are disposed of by the lower courts and the republicans, it turns out, are just better at this than the democrats. they have more of a stable of potential nominees they re ready to move on quickly. secondly, you think about president obama surprisingly given his legal background, he was slow to get his nominees nominated at all. his choices nominated. the second factory for trump success is the senate. they re moving rapidly. judicial confirmations have become a priority on the familifloor moving ahead. the senate has largely begun to ignore the so-called blue slip practice that allowed home state senators to object to presidential nominees from their
minutes. when he was sworn in as president in 1969, richard nixon found a republican lawyer from south carolina to run the internal revenue service. his name was randolph thrower. great name. he d been excuse me, i said south carolina. i believe he was from georgia, actually. that was a screw-up on my part. he had not been a part of the nixon campaign. he had not been a particularly politically active republican back home. but he was well liked. he was supported and recommended by his home state senators maybe. for whatever reason he ended up getting the job. he met nixon for the first time. when nixon named him to the job to run the irs. and that was probably mr. thrower s first mistake. it s not clear now that he knew what he was getting himself into had he took that job. it s pretty clear that he didn t know exactly what kind of president he would be working for when he took that job and what that president expected of the person he would have running the irs. that much became c
for the trump administration to be seriously considered for a district court judgeship. particularly the court of appeals. we talk about the supreme court. 95% of all courses in the federal courts get solved at the courts of appeals. the average age of a trump pick is 46 years old. those people will be around for a long time. they ve gotten rid of this system of having home state senators approve nominees. that tends to lead to merit selection panels, people more from the middle. they are really picking far right judges who will be there for decades to come. does this issue stay beneath the radar screen if there should be a supreme court vacancy between now and the midterm? i think a supreme court vacancy will certainly escalate this issue. that s something again i think people identify with. and the last time we had, if justice kennedy will retire and the balance of the supreme court on issues like abortion and marriage equality and obamacare
praised the klu kluxklan. that s why the pushing through of these nominees is so de devastating. we saw nominees that said that brown wasn t decided right. we have senator mcconnell determined to push these nominees to the point today he did something virtually unprecedented and that is bring a nominee to a vote even though one of his home state senators has not returned the blue strip. it s one of these things that