Since it's always nice to deal with facts, and the left in the filibuster fight refuse to do this...
http://www.progressforamerica.com/1101-361.1101-051205A.html
They keep harping, Bush has the same percentage of judges confirmed as other presidents! Oh gosh, then what's the big deal? Well, these people who spew these numbers, surely know that we're talking about the courts directly under the US Supreme Court, the federal appellate courts, and for those courts, Bush has the lowest record confirmed than any other modern president...here are the numbers.
(as reported in the link above)
On his dalythoughts.com blog, Gerry Daly, whose results were recently highlighted in the Economist magazine, has elucidated the postwar record. With minor adjustments explained below, here are Mr. Daly's provocative findings.During the first complete two-year Congress of their presidencies, postwar presidents achieved the following confirmation rates for their circuit-court nominees: Truman (80th Congress; 3/3: 100 percent); Eisenhower (83rd; 12/13: 92.3 percent); Kennedy (87th; 17/22: 77.3 percent); Johnson (89th; 25/26: 96.2 percent); Nixon (91st; 20/23: 87 percent); Ford (94th; 9/11: 81.8 percent); Carter (95th: 12/12: 100 percent); Reagan (97th: 19/20; 95 percent); G.H.W. Bush (101st; 22/23: 95.7 percent); Clinton (103rd: 19/22: 86.4 percent); G.W. Bush (107th; 17/32: 53.1 percent).
Thus, for the first complete two-year Congresses of the 10 postwar presidencies preceding George W. Bush's, the circuit-court confirmation rate averaged 91.2 percent. For Mr. Bush, it was 53.1 percent. Moreover, before George W. Bush, no president's confirmation rate during his first complete Congress fell below 77 percent, which is nearly 50 percent (and 24 percentage points) higher than Mr. Bush's confirmation rate. It is also worth noting that the three nominees returned by Mr. Clinton's first Congress were confirmed during his second, effectively raising his first-Congress rate to 100 percent. And if we exclude Mr. Bush's two circuit-court nominees who were appointed to the federal judiciary by Mr. Clinton and nominated for the circuit-court bench by Mr. Bush as an unrequited, magnanimous gesture to the Democrats, then Mr. Bush's first-Congress confirmation rate falls to 50 percent (15/30), which is half Mr. Clinton's first-Congress effective rate.
Let's now aggregate the data for a president's first four-year term, while making minor, necessary adjustments (e.g., folding the 79th Congress into the first term of Truman, who succeeded Roosevelt in April 1945; using 1965-1968 as Johnson's first term; and ignoring Ford, who served less than 2.5 years). Then, the first-term confirmation rates are the following: Truman (10/11: 90.9 percent); Eisenhower (23/26: 88.5 percent); Kennedy/Johnson, 1961-1964 (24/29: 82.8 percent); Johnson, 1965-1968 (37/39: 94.9 percent); Nixon (38/41; 92.7 percent); Carter (56/61: 91.8 percent); Reagan (33/42: 78.6 percent); G.H.W. Bush (42/54: 77.8 percent); Clinton (30/42: 71.4 percent); G.W. Bush (35/66: 53 percent).
Thus, since World War II, for the nine four-year, first-term presidencies that preceded George W. Bush's, the circuit-court confirmation rate averaged 85.5 percent. For Mr. Bush's first term, the rate was a relatively dismal 53 percent.
Finally, throughout the same nine postwar, first-term, four-year presidencies that preceded George W. Bush's, Congress returned a total of 46 circuit-court nominations to the president upon adjournment. Those 46 averaged five per four-year term over 36 years. During Mr. Bush's first four-year term, 30 circuit-court nominations were returned by Congress.
This is the problem with the democrats in this issue.
I'm confused as to why the democrats, lead in this charge by Harry Reid, are still attacking these nominees as radicals, they keep attacking Bush and claiming he's trying to overthrow the 2 party system. Also, to this day, they continue to make these bogus claims of how Americans feel about the issue and parrot the bogus percentages of appellate court judges that have been confirmed for Bush.
Why, I ask? Why are lies like this tolerated, especially when it's so obvious that these are, indeed lies. A 5 minute search reveals the truth, yet millions of Americans buy the garbage and the lies.
This shouldn't be the behavior in the halls of Congress, but thanks to the Democratic party, this is now the norm. If it's not hateful rhetoric about Christians, Bush, conservatives, it's fallacious claims of "Senate tradition" or extremists judges, distorted views of polls, and more. It should be a shock that the leaders of our country have come to this, but we ARE talking about the same party that elected as their party chair, a man who says he hates the other party, that he thinks it's okay and just to attack others without proof...a man who said that this is all a battle of good and evil, and the Republicans are evil. Add him to the loonys like Kennedy, Pelosi, Boxer, and Rangell, and you have a party that no longer values truth, decency, respect, or fairness. That's the modern day Democratic party, and too many Americans are all too willing to go along with it.