Thursday, June 30, 2016

What about the Other Judicial Nominees?

It finally happened.

372 days after President Barack Obama nominated him to serve as a district judge for the US District Court for the State of Nebraska, Robert F. Rossiter Jr. finally got the gig.


This past Monday, the US Senate voted, 90-0, to confirm Rossiter, who's also the newly-elected president of the Nebraska State Bar Association...and the Purdue University and Creighton University grad (he got his doctorate at Creighton) assumed the bench yesterday.  
Congratulations to Rossiter...and all the very best to him. 

Now it's time for the two dozen other district-judge nominees to get their confirmations. 

In fact, it's long been time.

One of the reasons Rossiter's got a new job is US Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE),
who fought like you-know-what to get the Eighth Judicial District a replacement for the now-retired Joseph Bataillon. 

On the other side of the coin...Fischer's one of the US senators fighting like you-know-what to prevent Merrick Garland from even having a hearing as Obama's nominee to replace the now-deceased Antonin Scalia.

You know the big Republican rationale: "No president has ever nominated anyone for the US Supreme Court during an election year, and the Senate has never voted to confirm a Supreme Court nominee during an election year. And no Supreme Court justice ever took the oath of office in an election year."

That's the same line Fischer gave me and so many other Nebraskans when she received emails that pleaded for a hearing for Garland.

Fischer turned 37 in 1988...an election year. (Guess who she voted for on 11-8-1988.) 

1988 was also the year where, 49 days into the year, a 51-year-old Californian named Anthony Kennedy became the newest SCOTUS justice.
 

How about it, you Senate Republicans?

Isn't it time to give Garland his due?


How much longer does he have to wait?