Sounds like, well, a tough-talking Pacino character.
The bench gets warmer
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Movement on the judicial-confirmation front?
The Senate late Wednesday approved its first judge of 2013: William Kayatta of Maine, for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit. Since being appointed by President Obama, he’d been waiting about 10 months for that cliffhanger 88 to 12 vote. (After all, you don’t want to be too hasty on these matters.)
And the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday sent to the full Senate the nomination of Caitlin Halligan , a former New York solicitor general who clerked on the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and the Supreme Court, for a seat on that appeals court.
The committee, heading into a week-long recess, approved her nearly two years ago on a straight party-line vote of 10 to 8. This time the vote was 10-7, with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) taking a pass.
Another appellate nominee, Patty Shwartz , was also voted out Thursday, on an 11 to 7 vote, with all Democrats and Graham voting in favor.
The committee, on voice vote, also sent nine U.S. District Court and two U.S. Court of International Trade nominees to the floor, where their fates continue to be most uncertain.
Senate Republicans have done very well slow-walking Obama’s judicial nominees — far better than Democrats did during George W. Bush’s presidency.
The White House calculates that at this point in their presidencies, President Clinton’s district and appeals court nominees waited an average of 114 days from nomination to confirmation and Bush’s nominees waited nearly twice as long, 209 days.
But Obama’s nominees have waited an average of 342 days. This “needless delay is unacceptable,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said in a statement.
Well, it may seem an odd way to run a country, but it’s not clear there’s going to be much change soon, absent some huge bipartisan agreement on these matters.
The gears of Justice
Tracy Schmaler , head of the Justice Department’s public affairs shop for the past four years, is going private, joining ASGK Public Strategies, the firm co-founded by former White House senior adviser David Axelrod.
Schmaler will be managing director and head of a new operation in Washington dealing with, among other things, crisis communications, litigation, and regulatory and congressional matters.
Before signing up at Justice, she oversaw Yahoo’s global public affairs office here, and before that she was communications director for the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Her departure, expected next month, will add to a growing number of vacancies in the department’s top spots.
Justice looks to have “acting” people in charge of the civil division, the criminal division (as of March 1), national security (when CIA nominee John Brennan gets confirmed and Assistant Attorney General Lisa Monaco moves over to replace him at the White House), the office of legislative policy, the associate attorney general (the third-ranking official), the office of justice programs and, in March or April, the environmental and natural resources shop.
That’s about half the number of top officials.
With Emily Heil
The blog: washingtonpost.com/
intheloop. Twitter: @InTheLoopWP.
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