Sen. Patrick Leahy quotes this blog regarding Judge Jordan

Check out Sen. Leahy's statement here (regarding Judge Adalberto Jordan's status before the Senate), which quotes this post from yesterday:

Statement Of Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.),

Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee,

On the Nomination Of Judge Adalberto Jordan To The Eleventh Circuit

February 14, 2012

Republican Senators delayed a final vote on the nomination of Judge Adalberto Jordan of Florida even though the Senate voted 89-5 last night to end a Republican filibuster that has already prevented a vote for four months.  This is a consensus nominee who Senator Nelson has been strongly supporting and who Senator Rubio also supports.  He should have been confirmed four months ago.  He should have been confirmed last night after the overwhelming cloture vote.  Instead, obstruction needlessly delayed the Senate acting to fill the emergency judicial vacancy on the Eleventh Circuit.
Senator Nelson has worked hard for this nomination, working to get Judge Jordan’s nomination cleared by every Democratic Senators in October immediately after it was reported unanimously by the Judiciary Committee.  We were ready to vote in October.  We were ready to vote in November.  We were ready to vote before the end of the last session of Congress in December.  It is hard to believe that it is now the middle of February, over four months after Judge Jordan’s nomination was reported with the support of every Democrat and every Republican on the Judiciary Committee, and the Senate still has not voted to fill this judicial emergency vacancy affecting the people of Florida, Georgia and Alabama.  I appreciate why Senator Nelson is frustrated.  I understand why Hispanics for a Fair Judiciary and the Hispanic National Bar Association are, too.

Let me refer to some of the reporting on this.  One post begins:

“So, here’s the absurdity of our judicial confirmation process – the full Senate voted 89-5 to invoke cloture, meaning that Judge Jordan’s nomination to the 11^th Circuit would finally come to a vote.  But then Senator Nelson said that one Senator is holding up the merits vote by demanding 30 more hours of ‘debate’ post-cloture.  Senators Leahy and Boxer both then commented how ridiculous such a request was, but that’s the way it is.  It looks like we’ll have [to] wait another 30 hours for Judge Jordan to move up to the 11^th.  Silliness in our Congress . . . .”

The article in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports:
“South Florida lawyers praise him.  Both of Florida’s U.S. senators have recommended him.  And the Senate Judiciary Committee voted unanimously to approve his nomination.
But U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan of South Florida has been blocked for four months from rising to the 11^th Circuit Court of Appeals, the latest sign of a polarized and dysfunctional Senate.
A Senate filibuster that has kept Jordan waiting and the appellate court undermanned fizzled on Monday when the Senate voted 89-5 to move toward a final confirmation vote.
But Jordan is still waiting because one senator . . . objected to attempts to complete action on Monday . . . .”
I have not heard from any Republican Senators objecting to this Judge explaining what they find wrong with this highly-qualified Cuban American.   I am at a loss as to why Republican Senators continue to delay a vote on this outstanding nominee.  This nominee is beyond reproach.  This is another nomination battle that has nothing to do with the nominee and his qualifications.  This is another example of obstruction based on a collateral objective.  The people of Florida, Georgia and Alabama should not be made to suffer a judicial emergency vacancy when this highly-qualified nominee should be confirmed without further delay.  Nor did anyone come forward to explain the Senate Republicans’ delay for the last four months.   Cloture has been invoked by the Senate and the filibuster will be ended.   There was no good reason to continue to hold up a vote that has already been delayed for four months.
When I first became Chairman of the Judiciary Committee in 2001, I followed a time when Senate Republicans, who had been in the majority, had pocket filibustered more than 60 of President Clinton’s judicial nominations, blocking them with secret holds in backrooms and cloakrooms, obstructing more with winks and nods, but with little to no public explanation or accountability.  I worked hard to change that and to open up the process.  I sought to bring daylight to the process by making the consultation with home state Senators public so that the Senate Republicans’ abuses during the Clinton years would not be repeated.
When Senate Democrats opposed some of President Bush’s most ideological nominees, we did so openly, saying why we opposed them.  And when there were consensus nominees—nominees with the support of both Democrats and Republicans-- we moved them quickly so they could begin serving the American people.  That is how we reduced vacancies in the presidential election years of 2004 and 2008 to the lowest levels in decades.  That is how we confirmed 205 of President Bush’s judicial nominees in his first term.
Now we see the reverse of how we treated President Bush’s nominees.  Senate Republicans do not move quickly to consider consensus nominees, like the 15 still on the Senate Calendar that were reported unanimously last year and should have had a Senate vote last year.  Instead, as we are seeing today and have seen all too often, Senate Republicans obstruct and delay even consensus nominees, leaving us 45 judicial nominees behind the pace we set for confirming President Bush’s judicial nominees.  That is why vacancies remain so high, at 86, over three years into President Obama’s first term.  Vacancies are nearly double what they were at this point in President Bush’s third year.  That is why half of all Americans—nearly 160 million—live in circuits or districts with a judicial vacancy that could have a judge if Senate Republicans would only consent to vote on judicial nominees that have been favorably voted on by the Senate Judiciary Committee and have been on the Senate Executive Calendar since last year.
This is an area where we should be working for the American people, and putting their needs first. This is a nomination that has the strong and committed support of the senior Senator from Florida, Senator Nelson, as well as that of Senator Rubio, Florida’s Republican Senator.  Judge Jordan had the unanimous support of every Republican and every Democrat on the Judiciary Committee when we voted last October, although one Republican switched his vote last night to support the filibuster of Judge Jordan’s nomination. This is the nomination of a judge, Judge Jordan, who was confirmed to the district court by a vote of 93 to one in 1999, even while Senate Republicans were pocket filibustering more than 60 of President Clinton’s judicial nominees.
I regret that Republican Senators chose to delay a final vote on Judge Jordan’s confirmation.  He is fine man who, after emigrating from Havana, Cuba at the age of six went on to graduate summa cum laude from the University of Miami law school and clerk for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court.  He served as Federal prosecutor and Federal judge.   The needless delay of Judge Jordan’s confirmation is an example of the harmful tactics that have all but paralyzed the Senate confirmation process and are damaging our Federal courts.
It should not take four months and require a cloture motion to proceed to a nomination such as that of Judge Jordan to fill a judicial emergency vacancy on the Eleventh Circuit. It should not take more months and more cloture motions before the Senate finally votes on the nearly 20 other superbly-qualified judicial nominees who have been stalled by Senate Republicans for months while vacancies continue to plague our Federal courts and delay justice for the American people.  The American people need and deserve Federal courts ready to serve them, not empty benches and long delays.

Well done Senator.  Now let's get Judge Jordan confirmed!

Judge Adalberto Jordan confirmation stalled (briefly?)

So, here's the absurdity of our judicial confirmation process -- the full Senate voted 89-5 to invoke cloture, meaning that Judge Jordan's nomination to the 11th Circuit would finally come to a vote. But then Senator Nelson said that one Senator is holding up the merits vote by demanding 30 more hours of "debate" post-cloture. Senators Leahy and Boxer both then commented how ridiculous such a request was, but that's the way it is. It looks like we'll have wait another 30 hours for Judge Jordan to move up to the 11th. Silliness in our Congress....  (For lots of discussion, see Glenn Sugameli who is closely covering the process).

UPDATE -- Roll Call has this discussion of what happened:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is delaying the confirmation of Adalberto Jose Jordan to join the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as well as a transportation bill in an effort to force Senate leaders to schedule a vote on his proposal to cut off aid to Egypt until Americans being held there are released.


The Senate voted 89 to 5 to end debate on Jordan’s nomination and now the Senate must wait 30 hours before voting to confirm Jordan, as Paul has made it known that he would object to anyone seeking to shorten the post-cloture period.

Senate Democratic leadership aides said talks with Paul are ongoing in an effort to work out a deal.

But if no agreement is reached, the vote would take place Wednesday morning, forcing the Senate to waste up to two days and halting progress on a surface transportation bill currently on the floor.

“What’s happened on the Senate floor tonight is just ridiculous,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. “We are supposed to be on a highway bill, a bill that will protect 1.8 million jobs and create” more.

Just before the Senate adjourned for the evening, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), in announcing the Senate’s business for Tuesday, said Democrats expect Jordan to be confirmed Tuesday.

More from NPR here:

During the floor vote, Sen. Nelson expressed frustration at the tactic.


"Is it any wonder we can't get anything done around here?" he asked.

LINNING!

Your Monday Morning inspiration: The big news this morning is that Judge Jordan could be confirmed by lunch. Check back this afternoon for updates.

Judge Jordan to be confirmed Monday?

There's a very good chance of that according to Glenn Sugameli, who has been all over the judicial appointment process.  Here's the Senate Floor Schedule for Monday:

Following morning business, the Senate will proceed to Executive Session to consider Calendar #437, the nomination of Adalberto Jose Jordan, of Florida, to be United States Circuit Judge for the 11^th Circuit with one hour of debate equally divided and controlled between Senators Leahy and Grassley or their designees .

 Let's keep our fingers crossed.

Meantime, tonight was the big Federal Bar gala at the Hyatt.  It was packed with judges and lawyers.  Brett Barfield has done an unbelievable job as president of the organization.  Even the food was better tonight.  I think I had 8 of those mini-beef tacos.

Red Lobster and Bowling

This is a great story from the Sun-Sentinel, and Judge Hurley does the right thing:

A marital spat that began when a Plantation man didn’t wish his wife a happy birthday and then escalated into a domestic violence charge, resulted in an unusual bond court ruling by a perceptive judge.

Instead of setting bond or keeping Joseph Bray locked up, he ordered him to treat his spouse to dinner, a bowling date and then to undergo marriage counseling.

“He’s going to stop by somewhere and he’s going to get some flowers,” Judge John “Jay” Hurley said during the first appearance hearing. “And then he’s going to go home, pick up his wife, get dressed, take her to Red Lobster. And then after they have Red Lobster, they’re going to go bowling.”

Hurley emphasized that he would not have ordered such whimsical conditions for Bray, 47, if his domestic violence charge was more serious, or if his wife appeared to be injured or in danger of being harmed.

The video is worth watching so you can see that the Judge handles this just right.

Santorum!

What a day for the guy!  I can't believe what still exists as the #1 hit on Google for his name.  Shouldn't these results trump?

Other news:

1.  In dissent, the 10th Circuit makes fun of the sentencing guidelines by starting the opinion this way:

In the richness of the English language, few things can create as much mischief as
piling prepositional phrase upon prepositional phrase. The child says, “I saw the man on
the hill with the telescope.” Did the child use the telescope to see the man on the hill? Or
did the child see a man — or even a hill — bearing a telescope? A newspaper headline
heralds, “Brothers Reunited after 20 Years on a Roller Coaster.” Did the brothers
recently bump into each other at an amusement park? Or were they the long suffering
experimental subjects of some evil genius?

2.  While the 9th Circuit is deciding Prop 8, the 11th Circuit has this opinion as described by the AP:

The federal appeals court in Atlanta has rejected claims by a former counselor for the CDC who said she was was fired for refusing to advise employees in same-sex relationships because of her religious beliefs.

The court said it accepted Marcia Walden's sincerity that her devout Christian beliefs prohibited her from counseling clients in same-sex relationships. But it found Walden was laid off because her superiors disapproved of the way she referred a lesbian client to another counselor and were concerned how she would handle future referrals.

3.   The FBI isn't going to use GPS devices as much now, but they aren't happy about it or that pesky 4th Amendment:

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said GPS surveillance is the subject of legal analysis within the intelligence community.

"We are now examining … the potential implications for intelligence, foreign or domestic," he told the Senate Intelligence Committee last week.

"That reading is of great interest to us. In all of this, we will — we have and will — continue to abide by the Fourth Amendment."

Ray Mey, a former FBI counterterrorism official, said the bureau's decision to limit GPS use, if only temporarily, poses potential risks and staffing problems.

4.  If a judge orders you to disclose a password and you forget, what happens?

A Colorado woman ordered to decrypt her laptop so prosecutors may use the files against her in a criminal case might have forgotten the password, the defendant’s attorney said Monday.
The authorities seized the Toshiba laptop from defendant Ramona Fricosu in 2010 with a court warrant while investigating alleged mortgage fraud. Ruling that the woman’s Fifth Amendment rights against compelled self-incrimination would not be breached, U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn ordered the woman in January to decrypt the laptop.
“It’s very possible to forget passwords,” the woman’s attorney, Philip Dubois, said in a telephone interview. “It’s not clear to me she was the one who set up the encryption on this drive. I don’t know if she will be able to decrypt it.”
The decryption case is a complicated one, even if solely analyzed on the underlying Fifth Amendment issue. Such decryption orders are rare, and they have never squarely been addressed by the Supreme Court.

A similar issue was addressed by Judge Cohn, but he determined that the government could not force a suspect to disclose the password. This issue seems likely to go up to the Supremes...

Deja vu all over again

1.  What a game. Fun stuff. It's always amazing to me how close the odds-makers pick the spreads, even on the prop bets. Just an example -- the over/under on Kelly Clarkson's rendition of the National Anthem was 1:34 and she came in at 1:34 exactly.

2.  Best ad of the game:

3. In the other big game over the weekend, the Canes beat Duke in NC for the first time. Bubble team right now...

4. Closer to home, there is a debate about the word "Gypsie":

A Fort Lauderdale family of accused psychic swindlers has come under fire for allegedly conning clients out of $40 million, but one defense attorney in the case says the fortune-telling business isn’t the only thing on trial — the family’s ethnic heritage, too, has become a target. At issue: the word “gypsy,” which has been mentioned several times in the case against the Marks clan, a three-generation psychic family of Romanian Gypsy descent. Defense attorney Fred Schwartz says the word constitutes a slur, and is comparable to the N-word being leveled at African-Americans. “The connotation of the word ‘gypsy’ is a group of wandering people who go from city to city committing crimes,” said Schwartz, who accuses prosecutors of employing the word as a “tactical advantage” that will make the Marks family seem guilty. The case is expected to go to trial later this year. ***

Hogwash, say prosecutors, who insist there’s nothing inherently derogatory about saying gypsy. In court filings, Assistant U.S. Attorney Laurence Bardfeld said all the G-word hoopla amounts to nothing more than a defense team “trying to ‘muddy up the waters’ in an attempt to discredit the government.” Bardfeld noted that defense attorneys, too, had used the disputed word in open court, and he even cited several dictionary definitions of the word as further proof of its inoffensiveness. From the Oxford English Dictionary: “A member of a wandering race (by themselves called Romany), of Hindu origin, which first appeared in England beginning of the 16th [century] and was then believed to have come from Egypt.” Lastly, Bardfeld singled out one of the family members on trial, Ricky Marks. Marks has posted several family videos on YouTube in which he uses the word gypsy, including a “Gypsy Super Bowl Trip” video that also showcases the family’s collection of luxury cars — the fruits of their lucrative psychic enterprise.

5.  Yes, Rumpole, Justice Scalia even says he is "defendant-friendly."

6.  And from my favorite item of the weekend, the inmates in Vermont are pretty funny:

Prison inmates who make decals for the Vermont State Police slipped a pig into the official seal, and up to 30 patrol cars wound up sporting the subliminal epithet, the Burlington Free Press tells us. The police emblem features a cow, an evergreen tree and snowy mountains (along with three unidentifiable creatures). Back in 2008, an inmate artist at the Northwest State Correctional Facility went into the computer file and modified one of the cow's spots to resemble a pig, the common derogatory term for police, Vermont Corrections Commissioner Andy Pallito told the Free Press, like USA TODAY a Gannett paper. In 2009, the state police ordered 16-inch door decals. Pallito said he believes 60 altered decals were made. Some new cruisers have two, while older cars may have just one if a door was replaced. New decals, costing $780, are expected Monday. State officials learned of the prank Thursday. They blamed quality control at the Vermont Correctional Industries Print Shop in St. Alban. Prison authorities are trying to identify the inmate behind the Rorschach test.

Bad week of blogging

Sorry for the slow blogging this week. There just wasn't much happening in the District. I have confirmed that Bill Matthewman is going to be the new Magistrate in WPB, which is very cool. He will join Dave Brannon as the new dynamic duo up north. Brannon had his going away party last week at the PD's office, and I heard it was a great event with judges and lawyers toasting him. Have a nice Superbowl weekend. Your moment of zen: