By TChris

It comes as no surprise that Democrats in the Senate try to block extremely conservative nominees to the federal judiciary while Republicans try to block the most liberal nominees. The leaking of internal memos apparently written by aides to two Democratic Senators and stored in the computers of the Senate Judiciary Committee -- memos that "sketch the evolution between 2001 and early 2003 of plans to filibuster court nominees perceived as too conservative" -- has nonetheless provoked predictable controversy and finger-pointing. The leaker, underlining a sentence recommending that the Committe refrain from approving Sixth Circuit nominations until the Supreme Court decided the affirmative action cases that were then pending, wrote "Talk about political!" in the margin.

But Democrats on the committee are happy to return fire, noting that when Bill Clinton was president, Senate Republicans blocked all nominees to the same court, perhaps with the same explosive affirmative action cases in mind.

... "Each party ratchets up the politicization of the process," said Peter Berkowitz, a fellow of the Hoover Institution. "There were Republican abuses that are now taken a step farther by the Democrats -- and I expect when we see the next Democratic president, the Republicans will ratchet it up one more step."

The fact that each party seeks to mold the judiciary to reflect the party's values is not a well kept secret. Nor is it surprising that Republicans seek to gain political advantage from the memos by holding them up as proof that Democrats have "contrived a controversial filibuster of judicial nominees from the raw material of crass politics, driven by the demands of liberal special interest groups." Democrats, in turn, "see the memos as evidence of GOP perfidy, no less incriminating than a pillowcase full of silverware in the gloved hands of a burglar." Debate about the memos is a pointless distractiion from the Judiciary Committee's critical task: evaluating and approving the nomination of qualified judicial candidates who are acceptable to both political parties.

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