Sen. Toomey Champion At Slow-walking Confirmations

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) sits on the Senate’s Judiciary Committee, and is holding up more judicial nominees than any other senator. Though a Toomey spokesman told the Huffington Post that the senator is simply holding his approval until the nominees have completed the committee’s background investigation, it comes at a time when Senate Republicans are deliberately slow-walking judicial confirmations. “Their strategy is to hold out until after 2016, when a Republican may be in the White House, and then start filling out federal courts with GOP-picked judges,” the Huffington Post reports. “The problem is that court vacancies are going unfilled in the meantime, and the judicial system is getting so backlogged that cases are being delayed for years and judges are burning out.”