Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) – Judiciary Committee Ranking Member is on CSPAN right now talking about the Estrada nomination.
Not a whole lot has changed. Estrada won’t answer any questions from the Senate Judiciary committee and they are plenty pissed about it.
I’ll grab some of this and put it up.
I also have another installment of my February 16th adventure going up today.
Then I have to cool it for a day or two while I finish up my grad school application before I miss the deadline…
You really should invest the time in learning more about this nomination than what you can get from listening to Democrats on the Senate floor.
For example,
http://www.cnn.com/2002/LAW/06/26/solicitors.general.estrada/
WASHINGTON (CNN) — All seven former solicitors general of the United States signed a letter to Sen. Patrick Leahy Tuesday urging him to drop his request for confidential documents in his probe of judicial nominee Miguel Estrada.
[…]
Three of the solicitors general served under Democratic administrations, four under Republican presidents.
“Any attempt to intrude into the Office’s highly privileged deliberations would come at the cost of the Solicitor General’s ability to defend vigorously the United States’ litigation interests — a cost that also would be borne by Congress itself,” the former officials said in a copy of the letter obtained by CNN,.
[…]
“Although we profoundly respect the Senate’s duty to evaluate Mr. Estrada’s fitness for the federal judiciary, we do not think that the confidentiality and integrity of internal deliberations should be sacrificed in the process,” the letter concluded.
[…]
The letter was written by Seth Waxman, the last of three solicitors general under the Clinton administration. The letter was sent on behalf of Waxman, Walter Dellinger, and Drew Days of the Clinton administration; Kenneth Starr from the George H.W. Bush administration; Charles Fried who served under Ronald Reagan; Robert Bork who also served under Reagan; and Archibald Cox who served under President John F. Kennedy.
and:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak27.html
The Democratic filibuster against judicial nominee Miguel Estrada has little to do with the 41-year-old Honduran immigrant.
[…]
This extraordinary design, without precedent in two centuries of judicial nominations, was launched Jan. 30 in the office of Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle. Present were Assistant Leader Harry Reid and six Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats. With all pledged to secrecy, the fateful decision was made to filibuster Estrada’s nomination.
[…]
At the Jan. 30 meeting in Daschle’s office, the eight senators agreeing to filibuster the Estrada nomination did not discuss his merits or demerits as a nominee for the District of Columbia appeals court, second in importance only to the U.S. Supreme Court. Rather, the objections to Estrada were political and procedural.
[…]
While conceding that Estrada is ”intelligent,” Kennedy has told colleagues that he must be filibustered because of the need to win an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation with the White House….Such comments belie the notion that Bush’s nominees would be given a Senate vote if only they would answer some questions.