This is pretty
ridiculous even for a Republican. The new chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has been
taking stock cooking the books of the committee's accomplishments, and has just decided to commandeer some of them.
Under Grassley’s version of new math, the current Senate has already confirmed 11 judges. Grassley counts these judges even though they were reported out of committee and confirmed not in the current Senate, the one in which Republicans are in the majority, but by the last Senate during its "lame duck" session.
Of course, these confirmations were not the accomplishments of Senator Grassley or Senate Republicans. In fact, Senator Grassley delayed the confirmations for which he now seeks credit and opposed confirming any nominees reported out of committee during the lame duck session. Senate Republicans even blocked their own states’ nominees and forced Democratic leadership to file cloture motions on uncontroversial judges, all while many argued that confirmations should be shut down entirely during the lame duck.
Oh, that pesky history. So why is Grassley working so hard to rewrite it? Probably to be able to make the claim that he's completed plenty of nominations so why should any more be confirmed. Of course, there are still 44 judicial vacancies, and at least 25 retirements or other vacancies that will open in 2015. The flurry of confirmations in the lame duck session definitely helped ease the vacancy crisis, particularly in states like Texas that have had so many vacancies for so long that justice is being denied for hundreds of thousands.