Obama: Finally Ready to Fight? - by Michael Tomasky

[DonViejo]

May 30, 2013 4:45 AM EDT

What Obama’s upcoming announcement of three nominees to the D.C. Circuit could mean for the future of the judiciary—and his presidency. By Michael Tomasky.

Is Barack Obama finally ready to fight? His announcement, reportedly coming this week, of three nominees to sit on the District of Columbia federal bench sure makes it look like he is. You may not know or care who fills these vacancies, but believe me, politicians care about the D.C. bench passionately—in the 1980s it was, arguably, more important than the Supreme Court itself, the instrument and cynosure of the Reagan/“originalist” remaking of the federal judiciary. Putting three names forward for that court at the same moment is a hugely aggressive play—very uncharacteristic of Obama, and maybe a signal that he’s finally finished with the overripe come-let-us-try-to-reason-together phase of his presidency.

Happening at the same time are three more executive-branch appointments. Obama is going to spend the summer pushing, and the Senate tussling over, those. That’s six big nominations coming up all at basically the same time. Democrats need to win five of them and secure a change in Senate rules at least with respect to executive-branch nominations. All this will be happening while Congress is considering the immigration bill. So the stakes this summer are high, and the result will set the tone for the closing years of the Obama presidency—whether he’ll be in a position to wrest some concessions from the Republicans, or whether the stalemate will continue (or, worse, descend into crazed efforts to either remove him from office or at least besmirch his historical reputation).

The D.C. Circuit has leaned right, as I noted, since Reagan. It was a hot little nest of vipers at its height, back in the Clinton era, when its judges were allegedly parts of plots to destroy Clinton and when they parted the waters for special prosecutor Ken Starr to find any dirt he could on Clinton. Now it has four Republican-appointed judges and, as of last week, four Democratic-named ones, since the Senate confirmed (unanimously, I note) Sri Srinivasian, who sat in limbo for months.

There are six more “senior” judges who are retired but are sometimes randomly assigned to cases, and five of those are conservative, so there is still ground to be made up. The court happens to have released several conservative opinions of late, including a key decision against an SEC rule that was an important part of the Dodd-Frank financial-reform law, and another curtailing a president’s (“a president’s”—funny, isn’t it, who happens to be the president right now!) ability to make recess appointments.

full article
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/30/obama-finally-ready-to-fight.html

[Doctor_J]

1. according to tpm Tue,

His plan is to "choose non controversial nominees in a show of bipartisanship". I tend to believe that version. He will again piss on the party faithful.

[blkmusclmachine]

2. .