It's one thing to talk tough, but you better back up your words with action because we are tired of the rhetoric. How many years have they said that they want to have this debate? It's time for the judges to be confirmed: HH: Now Senator Coburn, I'm most concerned about judges, because I watched Senator Leahy during the interregnum there, after Jim Jeffords jumped, and I know it's coming back. I know you have a great deal of interest in this. A) Who's going to lose their seat on Judiciary for the Republicans? TC: Nobody. Nobody on the Republicans will lose a seat. Mike DeWine lost his election, so therefore, he'll be off, and we will be decreased to one. HH: That's very good. TC: So we'll have the same group of fighters on there. Look, if they want to block good judges, then they can do that, and that'll be a great debate for the '08 election. That's one of the key issues that I believe the Republicans didn't talk about. The way we get our country back from a overreaching government, and an overreaching judiciary, is to put people who understand that their job is to interpret the Constitution, not to make the law and set cultural standards. And that's a debate I'm willing to fight Leahy on, and Schumer, every day. If they want to have judges that want to think that we can use European law and postmodern thought that says there are no principles that guide us, there's no truth, then let's have that debate in America, because we're going to win that debate. So I relish the chance for them to try to obstruct the judges. [...] HH: All right. Now when the Supreme Court nomination comes around, Chuck Schumer said yesterday there's not going to be another Alito, and I guess that means another superb justice will draw his ire. How big of a battle will that be? Because there has never been a Supreme Court nominee who's been denied a debate on the floor of the Senate, and at least a vote on cloture on the floor of the Senate. TC: Well, I think a couple of things will happen. Number one is that Senator Schumer's wrong. The President has the Constitutional authority to nominate, not Senator Schumer. So the President will nominate, there'll be a hearing on Supreme Court nominees, and if they don't let the President's nominees have a vote, or if they get voted down, which that may be...is more likely the case, is that any nominee has...will get voted down, 10-9. Then it can go to the floor, but without the recommendation...but the majority leader won't bring it to the floor. So they'll attempt to kill all of them in the Judiciary Committee. The key is, and this is a democracy that we work under, and so the wonderful thing will be is we get to talk about voting against somebody that is qualified to be a Supreme Court nominee.
Read the rest here.HH: Let me understand what you're saying. You want to trade the two D.C. Circuit seats to the 9th Circuit and split it? Is that...
TC: Yeah, I want to create a new circuit, so that we have a circuit for the other states out there, and let California have its circuit court.
HH: You know, I wish I could spend hours convincing you as a professor of Constitutional law why that is a terrible idea, Senator, because the D.C. Circuit matters so much in the control of the federal regulatory state.
TC: Well, but the D.C. Circuit isn't overloaded right now.
HH: But, but...
TC: And we've got good votes on the D.C. Circuit.
HH: We don't have enough good votes, and it's aging good votes. But I can understand that. Did you...is that why Keisler didn't get out, because of the Republican decision that they want...
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