He should just give all these waiting judges a Christmas present and do a mass recess appointment.

Obama, blue doggy, is looking for a way to give the GOP more compromises to get judges placed.

Recess appointments don't work well for judges. They are temporary.

I am not sure you can recess appoint Federal Judges.

Anyway I doubt Merkley and Udall will be successful. The Senate Democrats don't want to reform the way things are done in the Senate. They like being irrelevant.

And why the hell is there no peep out of Obama? He should be shouting from the rooftops how grossly irresponsible this -- including the statistics that show just how completely partisan they are. The President simply refuses to do anything that might generate conflict, such as a strong attack with strong words, when in fact strong words inviting conflict -- in a single short sentence of blunt, one syllable Anglo-Saxon words only that will fit into the 10-second slot the late night news will allow for statements by this President -- are the only way to break into the news cycle. Continuing to deal with everything in a professorial or friendly-adversary manner guarantees that the right wing, which is not afraid of strong words, such as Boehner's "chicken crap," will control the discourse.

Yes, Mr. President, sometimes it's critically important for the good of the country to be disagreeable when you disagree. As I recall, the guy who cleared the money-changers out of the Temple didn't spend much time worrying whether he was being disagreeable.

Who was it yesterday who said he had a hard time sitting across from the Communist Chinese and lecturing them about how the rule of law is better than the rule of man?

If the law depends on which president appointed which judge, then our system is more broken than just the Senate.

What about the executive leadership crisis? Seems to me that better get fixed too!

Seould: the law depends on which president appoints which judge. That should have been clear in 2000 when Bush won the presidential election by a 5-4 vote, and the five justices were so embarrassed by what they did that they declared that decision should not be taken as a precedent.

I remember when W was in the White House and the Dems were blocking just a few of the most extreme and unqualified judicial candidates. Every time a Repub was in front of a microphone they were demanding an "up or down vote."

Yet we don't hear a peep out of the Dems on this issue.

The Repubs realized long ago that the Judiciary was critically important. Congress may enact the laws, but the courts interpret and enforce the laws. Or not.

The GOP understands how this works. For instance, every election law in the country is irrelevant when the only votes that count are the five conservative justices on the Supreme Court.

@urban legend: Actually, this has been going on for a while...but why are you shifting the blame to Obama? You really think that if he stood up there and bitched that the press would care? Or would they, instead, go the Repubs and get some kind of wacky statement and then report a "he said/she said" sort of story?

The latter is what would happen. And I'm a bit ticked off that the story hasn't received a hue and cry from progressives and many liberals...but they're too busy blaming Obama.

Oh well, there's tunnel vision for you.

The Democrats biggest problem in the Senate is Harry Reid. He has been an incredibly incompetent Majority Leader, and I hope they have the good sense to replace him in the next session, but given their abject lack of same up to this point, I don't hold out much hope.