Ethics

Senate Republicans Suddenly Love the Blue Slip

By Ed Brayton

All 41 Senate Republicans have sent a letter to President Obama demanding that the Senate Judiciary Committee, now led by Patrick Leahy, respect the time-honored procedure of blue slipping for judicial nominees to give them a route to kill nominees they don't like. Blue slipping is the procedure whereby a senator from a judicial nominees home state can prevent that nominee from getting a committee vote merely by refusing to respond to a perfunctory letter from the committee chairman about the nomination.

They demand that the blue slipping policy "be observed, even-handedly and regardless of party affiliation" and threaten that if this is not done, they will be forced to filibuster his nominees. Now let's travel back in time to the distant past of 2003, when Bush was in charge and the Democrats were in the minority. How did the Senate Republicans feel about blue slipping and judicial filibusters then?

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on March 09, 2009 (boomark / email).