Dan Webber, an Oklahoma City attorney and former U.S. attorney for Oklahoma’s Western District, writes in the Tulsa World that Oklahoma Sens. Tom Coburn and Jim Inhofe should “Maine up” by following the lead of Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe to urge their colleagues not to accept their party’s political standoff on federal circuit judges.
Read his full commentary here.
Last month, Collins and Snowe announced that President Barack Obama’s nomination of William Kayatta Jr. had been held up by a moratorium on confirmation of appellate judges, which is not unusual in the months leading up to a presidential election. The Senate Judiciary Committee confirmed his nomination in April.
Kayatta, a nationally known trial lawyer from Cape Elizabeth, would succeed Judge Kermit Lipez, who on Jan. 1 took active senior status after having served in that role since 1998. Lipez has agreed to maintain a full caseload through the end of the summer, according to members of Maine’s congressional delegation.
Collins said Kayatta’s nomination is languishing because the Obama administration didn’t move fast enough to prevent the presidential year stalling tactics. She says that’s unfair to Kayatta.
For Oklahoma, the Tulsa World reports, this means the confirmation of U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert E. Bacharach to a federal appeals court, according to Coburn, “is not going to happen,” despite support for Bacharach from both of Oklahoma’s senators.
Maine’s senators, however, are pressing for a floor vote on the Kayatta nomination.
Good luck getting that clown Inhofe to listen to logic.
Leave it to Collins to pin the blame on Obama. What a joke. I hope she gets voted out when she comes up for re-election.
Oklahoma’s US Senators are among the most reactionary and partisan in the entire body. Imhofe is obsessive about global warming being a complete lie, while Coburn has stated more than once that lesbianism in rampant in OK public schools solely because girls who both need to use the bathroom go at the same time–with teachers’ permission. Don’t look to either of these right-wingers to get much support from more moderate Senators from either party.
Crickets! I hear crickets! You start preaching eastern establishment liberal virtue to a Tulsa paper and at best you’ll be ignored… this is a story here, because we fancy ourselves to be sophisticated and educated and well civilized… unlike those poor hard scrable dust bowl denzines…
Oklahoma.. Oh I feel a song coming on…
” There’s a bright golden haze on the meadow,There’s a bright golden haze on the meadow.The corn is as high as a elephant’s eye,And it looks like it’s climbin’ clear up to the sky.Oh, what a beautiful mornin’,Oh, what a beautiful day!I got a beautiful feelin’Everything’s goin’ my way. “
Political decency from the GOP in Congress? Not likely.