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This will be a weekly post. Count remains at 150 judges confirmed. 105 District Court judges 43 Circuit Court judges 2 Supreme Court justices Upon reconvening after a lengthy summer break, the Senate confirmed 6 judges that should have been confirmed in July. There have been none since. That's right. Only six judges since July! There are currently 16 district judges on the floor waiting for a vote. Enough with the breaks and recesses, Mitch. Get your ass in gear!

On September 11th, at the beginning of the Senate's reconvening after their summer break, the Senate confirmed six judges that were supposed to be confirmed in June. There have been none since. Granted the Senate has been busy confirming other officials, but can still schedule votes on judges. We're watching, Mitch. Get your slow ass moving! I usually post on judges weekly, but will switch to daily to put the pressure on.

The Supreme Court on Monday denied a request to take up a challenge to a federal law requiring the registration of some firearms including silencers. Challengers in the case believe the Second Amendment protects such firearm accessories. An appeals court had held that a silencer is not a "bearable" arm protected by the Constitution. The case comes as a silencer was used during the recent Virginia Beach massacre and President Donald Trump suggested he'd look into restrictions on gun silencers. The Trump administration had also urged the court not to take up the issue. The order was issued without comment...

SEATTLE - A federal judge says police in Tukwila acted unconstitutionally when they arrested an illegal immigrant and turned him over to immigration authorities for deportation. Wilson Rodriguez Macareno, who is originally from Honduras, called police early last year about someone trespassing in his yard. The officers instead arrested him based on indications he was in the country illegally and brought him to a detention center for deportation. U.S. District Judge Richard Jones ruled Wednesday that the local police did not have the authority to arrest him for a civil, federal violation. He said a trial will be held to...

A Massachusetts judge has left court in tears after being indicted on obstruction of justice charges for allegedly helping an illegal immigrant evade immigration officials. Judge Shelley M Richmond Joseph and trial court officer Wesley MacGregor are accused of conspiring to prevent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from taking an undocumented immigrant into custody at Newton District Court on April 2, 2018. Joseph had allegedly ordered the courtroom recording device to be turned off for 52 seconds while she and the defendant Jose Medina-Perez's lawyer had a conversation about getting him out of the courthouse instead of handing him over...

Brett Kavanaugh has been confirmed, and he will serve as a justice on the supreme court for the rest of his life. This event assures rightwing dominance of the court for a generation – or so we are told. After all, at 53, he is not even the youngest conservative: Justice Neil Gorsuch is 51. The chief justice, who has been there for more than a decade, is only 63. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, by contrast, is 85, and Justice Stephen Breyer is 80. We are in, it seems, for decades of misery for labor unions, voting rights, regulation of...

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said Tuesday that she met with President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Merrick Garland, and she is “more convinced than ever that the process should proceed” despite the GOP leadership’s assertion that the next president should nominate the next Supreme Court justice. “I’ve just concluded a more than hour-long meeting with Judge Garland. It was an excellent meeting that allowed us to explore many of the issues that I would raise with any nominee to the Supreme Court as well as some of the criticisms that have been levied against him. The meeting left me...

Much attention is being paid to the U.S. Supreme Court vacancy, but equally partisan battles are being waged for control of state courts around the nation. In states where voters elect Supreme Court judges, millions of dollars are being spent to reshape the courts for years to come. Judicial watchdogs say spending by national groups overwhelmingly favors judges on the right of the political spectrum, and is mostly aimed at maintaining or improving the courts’ responses to corporate interests while countering state-level spending by labor unions and other interest groups. Lawmakers are busy too, debating proposals to tip the balance...

Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday tried to clear his name and tout his record on Supreme Court nominations, calling Republican branding of his past remarks on the subject “ridiculous” and casting himself as a longtime advocate of bipartisan compromise in filling seats on the high court. In a speech at Georgetown Law School, Biden issued a broad warning that Republicans’ election-year blockade of President Barack Obama’s nominee “can lead to a genuine Constitutional crisis” and sought to distance himself from the strategy. He argued Republicans have distorted a 1992 speech in which he seemed to endorse the notion of...

Republican lawmakers in Kansas, weary of conflicts with a judiciary that has been pushing for more school spending, are beginning to act on a measure to expand the legal grounds for impeaching judges. The move is part of an intensified effort in red states to reshape courts still dominated by moderate judges from earlier administrations. A committee in the GOP-controlled Senate plans to vote Tuesday on a bill that would make “attempting to usurp the power” of the Legislature or the executive branch grounds for impeachment. …

<p>Could Barack Obama's great week mark a turning point in his poll numbers?</p> <p>After months of stagnant approval ratings, a new CNN/ORC poll finds that for the first time in more than two years, 50% of Americans approve of the way Obama is handling the presidency. And his overall ratings are bolstered by increasingly positive reviews of his treatment of race relations and the economy.</p>

Judges have taken advantage of European and human rights laws to take power over democratically-elected politicians, one of the heads of the judiciary has said. A rebellious generation of lawyers who grew up in the “disrespectful” 1960s and 70s has exploited the weakness of politicians to build up its own influence, Lord Neuberger argued. In a speech made public yesterday, Lord Neuberger, president of the Supreme Court, highlighted the role of unelected judges in taking political decisions when elected politicians are too scared to act. In the speech, given to mark the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, Lord Neuberger said...

The Democrats have rolled out a couple of dishonest talking points in support of Obama’s executive order amnesty. One is that Presidents Reagan and Bush 41 both used executive orders on immigration. What that ignores is that both were cleaning up a law duly passed by Congress. In this case, Obama is explicitly acting because Congress won’t bend to his royal will. The new talking point, trotted out here by Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) is that this executive order is just like Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and that Obama should do it and then just let the courts decide whether...

One of the most liberal members of the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg could be expected to give a rousing defense of Roe v. Wade in reflecting on the landmark vote 40 years after it established a nationwide right to abortion. Instead, Ginsburg told an audience Saturday at the University of Chicago Law School that while she supports a woman's right to choose, she feels the ruling by her predecessors on the court was too sweeping and gave abortion opponents a symbol to target. Ever since, she said, the momentum has been on the other side, with anger...