LA Times has the story:

An early chance for the Obama administration to reshape the nation’s judiciary — and counter gains made in the federal courts by conservatives — appears close to slipping away, due to a combination of White House inattention and Republican opposition.

During President Obama’s first year, judicial nominations trickled out of the White House at a far slower pace than in President George W. Bush’s first year. Bush announced 11 nominees for federal appeals courts in the fourth month of his tenure. Obama didn’t nominate his 11th appeals court judge until November, his 10th month in office.

Moreover, Obama nominees are being confirmed at a much slower rate than those of his predecessor, largely because of the gridlocked Senate.

Key slots stand without nominees, including two on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the body that reviews decisions by federal agencies and a court that is considered second in importance only to the Supreme Court. Federal judicial vacancies nationwide have mushroomed to well over 100, with two dozen more expected before the end of the year. To date, the Obama administration has nominees for just 52 of those slots, and only 17 have been confirmed.

…

Judge confirmations have become like any other piece of legislation on the Hill. Democrats argue that the GOP leadership is requiring time-consuming cloture votes — motions to cut off debate that need 60 votes to pass and then often require hours of floor time to be spent before a final vote can be taken — on judges that are unopposed.

Earlier this month, Republicans required a cloture vote on Barbara Keenan, a nominee to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va. After that vote, Keenan was confirmed by a 99-0 tally.

By contrast, more than half of Bush’s judicial nominees were confirmed by voice vote or unanimous consent. Democrats consented to their confirmation without requiring time to be spent on a roll-call vote on the Senate floor.

Republicans counter that if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the White House believed judges to be a priority, they would use their clout to push them through. Reid controls the Senate calendar.

But a spokesman for Reid, Jim Manley, rejected that notion, saying the necessary cloture votes would chew up time on a Senate calendar already under duress from healthcare and jobs bills.

So the idea here is that Republicans are filibustering virtually every nomination. When that occurs, Harry Reid has to invoke cloture, which tolls a 30 hour clock, during which no other Senate business can be done. Once the thirty hours is expired, the Senate has a cloture vote and if there are 60 votes, cloture is invoked and the filibuster is ended. But ending the filibuster tolls another 30 hour clock which also keeps the Senate from doing other business. At the end of that 30 hours the Senate finally moves to an up-or-down vote.

So what’s happening is that Republicans are using this process to stall everything. An incredible number of votes – on nominees and substantive legislation – have been stalled in this way. That forces Harry Reid to prioritize. He can use 60 hours of floor time to pass a single judge, or he can use it to pass health care and jobs bills. And given that there are scores of judges awaiting confirmation, it probably won’t be possible to get more than a couple of dozen confirmed before Obama’s term expires. Unless…

Remember the “nuclear option” Majority Leader Frist threatened back in 2005? It would have done away with the minority party’s right to filibuster judicial nominees. In response to the threat, 7 Senators of each party joined to form the “Gang of 14″ and put out a statement saying they wouldn’t support filibusters of judges absent extraordinary circumstances. The agreement lasted for one session; it expired after the 2006 elections.

Could a new “gang of 14″ work today? Actually, no, a new agreement wouldn’t be helpful here; only pressing the nuclear option button could break the logjam. The reason for that is that all the gang did was promise to vote for cloture on judges (absent “extraordinary circumstances”). And as far as I know, none of Obama’s judges have been successfully filibustered; they’ve just faced cloture votes which, as previously explained, require 30 hours of dedicated floor time both before and after the cloture vote. A promise not to filibuster means only that the cloture vote would be overcome; the 60 votes would be there to get the judge an up-or-down vote. But there’d be nothing to stop, say, Jim Bunning (or any other single Senator), from filibustering and triggering the cloture vote process.

That’s why the nuclear option – taking away the filibuster for judges – is crucial to moving nominees.

I’m going to start asking about this in the coming days.