Bush Wants Fast Vetting on Judges. President Bush proposed a plan to speed Senate confirmation of his judicial nominees. By Elisabeth Bumiller. [New York Times: Politics]
Democrats said they had confirmed 80 of the president’s nominees. As of this week, there are 79 vacancies out of 849 federal judgeships, or 9 percent. While Mr. Bush blamed the Senate, Democrats said today that the White House and Republicans were also to blame. Ralph Neas, the president of People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group that has opposed Mr. Bush’s conservative nominees, said 26 of the vacancies were the result of the White House not yet naming a nominee. An additional 17 or 18 vacancies, Mr. Neas said, were the result of nominees who had cleared the Judiciary Committee but had run into objections from Republican senators.