languishing in limbo, this principled and qualified lawyer asked me to withdraw her nomination. now, the good news is last year i put forward another highly qualified nominee, shree nivasan. he was unanimously confirmed eye few weeks ago becoming the first south asian-american to serve on a circuit court in our nation s history. so i m pleased that the snapt a senate acted. i m glad republicans decided not to play politics and block his nomination the way they did with caitlin. i m hopeful we can now build on that progress because shree s nomination was the first to the d.c. circuit in seven years. so out of the four vacancies that it existed, one has now
we would rightly consider that a judicial crisis. if we want to ensure a fair and functioning judiciary, our courts cannot be short-staffed. in 2010 i put forward a highly qualified nominee for the d.c. circuit, caitlin halligan. caitlin s credentials were beyond question. she had bipartisan support from the legal and law enforcement community. she had the support of a majority of senators. nobody suggested she was not qualified to serve on the court. if caitlin had gotten a simple up or down vote before the full senate, i am confident she would have been easily confirmed. but instead for 2 1/2 years senate republicans blocked her nominations. had nothing to do with kate lip s qualifications. it was all about politics. and after 2 1/2 years of