The big story of the day was about the vote in the Senate on the appellate court nominees. Four names were submitted by the Governor several months ago and were finally put up for a vote today. Most of the Senate Republicans were peeved over the process used by the Governor. I look at things differently and voted for the nominees as did Republican Senators Greenleaf and Piccola. All of the Democrats voted for the nominees (I’m not sure for the same altruistic reasons, however). The final tally was 24 for and 26 against. Since it takes a 2/3rds vote to pass, it wasn’t even close. I think the Republicans will look worse over this vote than the Dems and early reports seem to indicate just that. Since the caucus could not argue that the nominees were not qualified, the process was attacked and a last ditch effort was made to say that demographically, the nominees were not truly representative of the Commonwealth. What we lacked was a constitutional reason to vote no, which is why I was compelled to vote yes. History will be the ultimate judge of this situation, no pun intended.
- John
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