http://www.nationalreview.com/article/350287/court-packing-another-name-editors
Next to the initial response to Benghazi, the DOJ’s journalist eavesdropping, and conservative targeting at the IRS, add the existence of the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to the list of things about the federal government of which President Obama has, apparently, only recently been made aware.
After years of treating the court (usually considered the second-most-important judicial body in the republic) with a casual indifference, the administration suddenly announced three nominees to it on Monday — and is using the bully pulpit to up pressure on the Senate to approve them quickly. In aid of that effort, Majority Leader Harry Reid has renewed his threats to change that body’s longstanding rules.
The president’s newfound interest in the D.C. circuit is puzzling, considering he waited nearly two years after taking office to make any nomination to the court whatever. Or that he delayed the nomination of federal solicitor Sri Srinivasan, who recently skated through the confirmation process, by three years over grumbles from his liberal base. Or that another nominee, NAACP counsel Debo P. Adegbile, failed even to make it past an initial screening by the American Bar Association. Or that he let months pass before acting after one of the few picks that did get to the Senate, Caitlin Halligan, failed to win confirmation.
And the urgency Mr. Obama now says is required to fill these vacancies is belied at turns by the facts (the most recent vacancy is barely three months old) and his own past behavior (the oldest vacancy is so old that Senator Obama availed himself of the opportunity to block President Bush’s nominee to fill it). The administrators of the federal courts, headed by custom and law by Chief Justice Roberts, identify 33 outstanding judicial “emergencies” — defined as longstanding vacancies in district or circuit courts with large volumes of filings. The Obama administration has made nominations in just eight of these cases. The D.C. circuit does not appear on the list. Indeed, eight of the circuit’s eleven authorized full-time judgeships are occupied, and there are six sitting “senior” judges who work lighter caseloads — meaning the circuit is operating at or above capacity. So there can be no credible argument about the relative urgency of filling its vacancies.
