Senate Confirms Three Judges
Suddenly, everyone’s talking about a judicial vacancy crisis. What crisis? After the Senate took swift action yesterday to confirm three judges (see below for the names), there are now only a mere 99 vacancies. That shouldn’t be a problem, right?
In other confirmation war news, Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont. apparently said in a speech that he had an issue with the federal judge who refused to take wolves off the Endangered Species Act list. According to the Billings Gazzette:
“When I first heard his decision, like many of you I wanted to take action immediately,” Rehberg said. “I asked: how can we put some of these judicial activists on the Endangered Species list?”
This comment left your blogger a little confused. Does this mean that Rehberg wants federal protection for those poor embattled activist judges? Or did he mean something else?
The nominees confirmed yesterday were:
- Paul Kinloch Holmes III, of Arkansas, to be United States District Judge for the Western District of Arkansas by a vote of 95-0.
- Diana Saldana, of Texas, to be United States District Judge for the Southern District of Texas by a vote of 94-0.
- Marco A. Hernandez, of Oregon, to be United States District Judge for the District of Oregon by unanimous consent.
Lawrence Hurley 