Libby Casey, APRN – Washington DC
U.S. Senate Republicans blocked moving forward on voting whether to confirm a 9th Circuit Court judge Thursday. But Alaska’s Senator Lisa Murkowski bucked her party and voted to advance toward a final ‘yea or nay’ vote.
President Obama’s nominee to fill a vacant spot on the 9th Circuit, the jurisdiction of which includes Alaska, is Goodwin Liu, Associate Dean at the University of California Berkeley Law School.
Murkowski was the only Republican who voted to move forward… but her office says she would have voted against actually making Liu a circuit court judge. The Senator voted on the principal that she believes nominees should have an up-or-down vote, and not get blocked in the lead-up process. Since the presidency of George W. Bush, a group of Democrats and Republicans agreed they would only filibuster, or block votes in “extraordinary circumstances.”
It takes 60 votes to get past the filibuster, but President Obama’s nominee got just 52 today.
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