Warren Richey | Washington | November 19

CSM - Judge David Hamilton is elevated to the US appeals court, after GOP effort to stall a vote failed. Republican resistance signals more political fights are likely over Obama's nominees to the federal bench.

The US Senate voted 59 to 39 on Thursday to elevate Judge David Hamilton from his current job as chief judge at the federal courthouse in Indianapolis to a seat on the Seventh US Circuit Court of Appeals.

The vote comes eight months after Judge Hamilton was nominated to the Chicago-based appeals court.

Hamilton drew the first significant Republican opposition to a judicial nominee by President Obama. An attempted filibuster on Tuesday failed, with Sen. Jeff Sessions (R) of Alabama able to muster only 29 votes. Seventy senators agreed to allow the nomination to move forward to Thursday’s vote.

The Hamilton nomination was being closely watched for indications of whether the kind of fiery confirmation battles waged by Democrats against Bush nominees would now be waged by Republicans against Obama nominees. The answer is yes.

Crooks And Liars, By Josh Glasstetter, November 19

On Tuesday, Senate Democrats beat back Jeff Sessions’ filibuster of Obama’s first judicial nominee – Judge David Hamilton – by a reassuring margin of 70-29. Sessions lost ten of his fellow Republicans, including conservatives like Hatch, Cornyn, and Thune, and Hamilton will be confirmed Thursday afternoon to the Seventh Circuit.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the GOP is winning the battle for the federal courts.

Just a few short years ago, right-wing Senators denounced filibusters of President Bush’s nominees in the strongest possible language and threatened to employ the “nuclear option.” Sessions went even further – he claimed Democrats were violating the Constitution by blocking any Bush nominee (no matter how extreme). But some time after November 4, 2008, his interpretation of the Constitution must have changed dramatically.

Now a Democrat is in the White House, and – hypocrisy be damned! – Sessions is vehemently pro-filibuster and pro-obstruction. And the worst part is that he’s been successful. Judge Hamilton was nominated in March to general acclaim. He received the highest possible rating from the ABA, both his home-state Senators strongly endorsed him (including senior Senate Republican Dick Lugar), and even the head of the Indianapolis Federalist Society backed him. It doesn’t get much better than that.