Two-tiered justice

On the recent Stanford rape case, I think Scott Lemieux makes a valuable point that helps clarify something I've been struggling with: does asking for a stronger sentence for a privileged person who has gotten off lightly undermine the broader push to make the U.S. criminal justice system less punitive?

Lemieux argues that it doesn't. Indeed, he suggests that the two are complementary goals: If you hold privileged (read: white and rich) defendants to the same standards the you hold underprivileged ones, people with power won't be able to ignore how draconian the system is and push to change it, instead of being able to close their eyes to it because those close to them escape its clutches. Think about the differences in the ways we've treated the opioid addiction problem and cocaine (abused broadly by middle and upper-class whites) in comparison to the way we treated the meth, heroin and crack problems (used disproportionately by the poor and/or minorities).

Finally, good on the survivor for her statement to the court and defendant during the sentencing. I have much respect for her.

If Dems get a chance to confirm Garland in the lame duck session, they should take it

Merrick Garland

At last Thursday's Democratic debate, moderators asked Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders a question from NY Daily News reader Hannah Green regarding Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of Antonin Scalia.

Hannah Green (ph) wants to know your position, Secretary Clinton, regarding President Obama's nomination of Merrick Gaarland to the Supreme m Court. President Obama said earlier this week that he would not withdraw the nomination, even after the presidential election. If elected, would you ask the president to withdraw the nomination?

Both Clinton and Sanders said that the currently support the nomination and strongly denounced Sen. Republicans for obstructing Garland's appointment. But they differed on whether they would ask Obama to withdraw the nomination if they were elected president: 

Clinton indicated acceptance of Obama's pick:

I am not going to contradict the president's strategy on this. And I'm not going to engage in hypotheticals. I fully support the president.

Sanders said he would ask Obama to withdraw the nomination:

...obviously I will strongly support that nomination as a member of the Senate. But, if elected president, I would ask the president to withdraw that nomination because.... I think that we need a Supreme Court justice who will make it crystal clear, and this nominee has not yet done that, crystal clear that he or she will vote to overturn Citizens United and make sure that American democracy is not undermined.  

(Debate transcript from CNN.)
I want to be careful about extrapolating inaccurate meanings from their words, but it seems that Clinton is indicating that she'd be open to having Garland confirmed to the court in a lame duck session if Democrats retain the presidency and retake the Senate. Sanders, on the other hand, would want to wait to get a better judge (meaning younger, more liberal and perhaps non-white or female.)

I agree with Clinton.  I think the costs of passing up a chance to get Garland on the bench are greater than the gains of holding out for some one potentially better (in the admittedly extremely low chance that Garland ever actually gets a vote).  Hit the jump for my reasoning.

Exploring potential legislative ways to limit the damage of Friedrichs

Public sector labor unions across the country have been grimily preparing for the likely negative results  from the Friedrichs vs. California Teachers Association case heard two weeks ago. The opinion in Friedrichs (undoubtedly 5-4, written by a super smug Samuel Alito, with a vicious dissent coming from Elena Kagan) will likely ban union agency fees on the grounds of free speech.  

Previously, I have outlined why this opinion shouldn’t be conflated with the end of public sector unionism. Here, I outline a legislative step unions and workers might be able to lobby for to blunt some of the impact of yet another depressing Alito majority opinion.

The likely outcome of Friedrichs will hurt labor -- but it won't destroy it

Two weeks ago, progressives had their days ruined by oral arguments in the Supreme Court in the case Friedrichs vs. California Teachers Association. The case has led to numerous breathless headlines declaring that this will be the end of public sector unions in the United States, comparing the case to what happened to unions in Wisconsin, where organized labor has been in a depressing tailspin since the passage of Act 10 in 2011, which eliminated collective bargaining rights for most public sector unions.

Those comparisons are far overblown: Freidrichs will hurt public unions, but they still will retain most of their rights. Here, I’ll discuss what the likely decision against the unions will do to hurt worker’s rights, but I’ll also emphasize that it’s important to remember that workers will retain considerable rights to bargain – unlike in Wisconsin.

Threats to Polish Democracy

After two decades of fairly widespread progress toward consolidated democracy, the last several years have brought some notable setbacks, linked to the election of conservative nationalist parties.

First, it was Hungary. A Christian nationalist party called Fidesz won a free and fair election in 2011, which granted it a supermajority in the country's unicameral parliament. The party then used its power to rewrite the country's constitution to permanently hardwire Hungary's political system in its favor. The reforms crippled the independent media and judiciary. They also changed the electoral system and redrew districts to make it extremely difficult for opposition parties to win a majority. Finally, they required 2/3s majorities for any future government to agree on replacing electoral commissioners, judges and other important officials. Read this post by Kim Lane Scheppele for a concise and depressing summary. 

Essentially,  the massive electoral victory allowed Fidesz to engage in a wholesale restructuring of the Hungarian state; the party then forced through a constitutional overhaul that locks those policies in place no matter what future  governing majorities might think.

Now Poland is exhibiting several alarming similarities to Hungary.

The newly-elected government of the Law and Justice Party (PiS) has pushed through reforms that limit the power of the Constitutional Court to review government policy for constitutionality and stack the court with PiS appointees.  A law cracking down on the independence of public media and making it more nationalist in scope appears to be next. We'll see where this goes, but the trajectory is not good.

Both Fidesz and PiS are conservative, nationalist, Christian-identified parties.

While both of these developments are alarming and discouraging, they do raise fundamental points in democratic theory: What issues should merely be "policy" issues that can be changed by regular order, and which ones rise to the level of needing enshrined in a national constitution and requiring supermajorities to change?

Labor's prospects over the next several years look alarming

As another election year dawns, I find myself contemplating the future of the labor movement.

The immediate future looks grim.

That isn't to say that the labor movement is going to die, or that unions won't continue to play a role or help working people. And it certainly doesn't mean that activists should stop fighting for the rights of working people everywhere.

However,  it's much more likely than not that the labor movement is going to suffer some serious hammer blows in 2016 and the remaining years of the decade.

I'll focus narrowly in this post on the spread of (so-called) Right to Work (for less) laws (RTW).

RTW is an insidious concept that cloaks itself in righteous language to divide workers and drastically weaken the power of their organizations.  By the National Labor Relations Act and the state statutes that govern collective bargaining for state and local public employees, unions have to represent all employees in a bargaining unit.  In 25 states, the union has the ability to bargain to charge fair-share fees of all member of the unit, which represent the costs of collective bargaining.  Full dues, which represent political activities engaged in by the union, are only paid by individuals who want to be members who in turn have rights to vote and participate in the governance of the union.

In an aside, remember that in order to represent workers, unions have to win an election to become the bargaining agent, and they are controlled by the members through democratically elected officers. Finally, they can be decertified if a majority of workers vote in an election to remove or replace the union. This is a fact glossed by anti-worker forces.

What RTW laws do is allow workers to free ride of the union's efforts by banning fair share fees. The corporate-backed groups and think tanks pushing RTW argue that workers have a right to not join a union (though they are rather silent on a worker's right to join a union). Of course, though banning fair-share fees, RTW laws still compel a union to represent any one in a bargaining unit. As a result, we create a free-rider problem described by Mancur Olson: why should you pay for something you can get for free?

RTW is insidious because it only appears to cripple a small part of collective bargaining rights: in itself, it doesn't touch the ability to bargain for better wages or working conditions. But by undermining the union finances, it cripples the ability of a union to organize, bargain and protect strong contracts, which can lead to fewer members, which leads to further financial erosion. At worst, a death spiral happens, leaving a bunch of isolated, cynical workers in its wake -- who then can be easily exploited by unfettered bosses.

Currently 25 states have RTW laws, and 25 do not. Since 2011, when Scott Walker eviscerated public sector unions in Wisconsin, three states have jumped on the RTW bandwagon: Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan.  From a worker's perspective this should be alarming, because all three of these states are in the industrial Midwest, which traditionally has a strong union presence. Michigan was the birthplace of the United Auto Workers (UAW), whereas the Association of State, County and Municipal Employees (ASCME) originally formed in Wisconsin.

As the parties have polarized and the remaining labor-friendly Republicans retire or are overwhelmed by their conservative colleagues, this momentum is likely to continue.

Extreme Risk:

West Virginia: I suspect it's pretty much all over in West Virginia. Like many Appalachian states over the last several election cycles, the legislature has become sharply more conservative, with the GOP breaking the dam in the 2014 elections. A RTW bill was shelved in 2015, but with GOP gains likely in both houses of the legislature and a Republican taking over the governor's chair very likely in 2016, in 2017, RTW's arrival will be a given.

Kentucky:  A slimmer and slimmer Democratic majority in the state House of Representatives is the only thing standing between RTW and Kentucky. The extreme conservative Matt Bevin's win as governor jumps this state from medium risk to extreme risk, as anti-labor policies are core to Bevin's identity -- in two of his first executive orders, he discarded higher minimum wage requirements for state agencies and issued a hiring freeze in filling unstaffed positions.

The Democrats may hang on to their house majority in 2016, since they were somehow able to cling to it in the low-turnout year of 2014.  However, the off-year election of 2018 is another animal entirely.

Several Kentucky counties have already tried to issue RTW laws on their own; these efforts are currently tied up in court, but the winds are very much blowing the wrong way for labor rights in this state.

High Risk:

Missouri:  Democratic Governor Jay Nixon vetoed a RTW bill in 2015 and the Democrats backed by a few nervous Republicans have managed to sustain those vetoes in the legislature, despite the GOP maintaining a supermajority in both chambers. Unlike West Virginia, the Democrats have a fighting chance in the governor's race in 2016, despite Missouri drifting further into the GOP orbit over the last decade. With a Democratic win in the governor's race, Missouri is likely safe for another four to eight years. With a GOP victory, RTW would likely be the very first thing on the government's agenda in 2017.

Medium Risk:

Ohio: With Republicans in strong command of both houses of the state legislature and the governorship for the foreseeable future and likely maintaining the governorship, Ohio would seem to be a likely candidate for a RTW bill -- and one is currently percolating in the legislature.

However, Ohio Republicans have a bitter memory of the last time they tried to push a major anti-worker bill through the legislature holding them back. In 2011,  Ohio Republicans pushed a Wisconsin-style bill designed to strip most collective bargaining rights from public employees. The bill passed, but  Labor and progressive groups gathered more than a million signatures to force a referendum, in which 62 percent of voters rejected the bill. 

That memory may be holding the GOP in check for now, but if other states continue to push through anti-labor laws, Ohio Republicans will likely eventually press forward.

Possible risk

Montana:  Montana's state legislature has been in solidly Republican hands since 2010, but Democrats have held the governor's chair. Incumbent Steve Bullock is in a reasonably strong position for the blue team, so hanging on to labor rights for at least four more years appears possible in this traditional mining state.

New Mexico: New Mexico currently has Democrats in control of the State Senate, but lost control of the House of Representatives in 2014.  Presidential year turnout will help protect the Democratic senate advantage in 2016 and perhaps help them retake the house.  But if Democratic power in the legislature erodes further, anti-labor legislation will be on the agenda when a Republican is governor.

New Hampshire and Pennsylvania might also be at risk. The Granite state occasionally gets massive GOP majorities in the two houses of its legislature, as it did after 2010. In that case a few moderate Republicans helped the Democrats in the house sustain Democratic governor John Lynch's veto of a RTW bill in the 2011-12 session. As long as the Democrats hold the governor's chair, they should be OK here, but elections are close and there is an open seat in 2016.  Pennsylvania is safe as long as Democrat Tom Wolf, elected in 2014 is in office, but the GOP has a built-in advantage in the state house and its majorities are becoming dominated more and more by extremely conservative ideologues.  Protecting Wolf in 2018 and drawing better districts in 2020 will be key to keeping the Keystone state working people from getting their collective bargaining rights curtailed.

The Supreme Court

This list doesn't count the worst probable hammer blow that's going to fall on labor this year. That would be Friedrichs vs. The California Teacher's Association, which has made its way to the Supreme Court a case set for oral arguments on January 11. The case will likely result in a 5-4 decision -- authored by Sam Alito--  overturning nearly four decades of precedent and invalidating fair share fees for all public sector unions on the specious grounds that collective bargaining with the government is a form lobbying (political speech), which cannot be compelled. Of  course, the union will continue to have to represent the interests of all of its members without their financial support, but I guess speech rights for dues payers aren't as important.

I so do weary of Alito's conception of Freedom of Speech in which it becomes much easier for wealthy owners to speak (see Citizens United) and much more difficult for working class people to organize so they can speak.

Again, we shouldn't despair from the likely reverses that are coming. The movement goes on and labor will continue that struggle. However, we should be aware that the struggle is likely going to become more difficult, though if we can win a few important elections -- we can blunt some of the blows.

And remember, that the only way to overcome RTW both legislatively and on the ground is to organize.

Solidarity.

Senate confirmation update -- Obama getting more appointments through

Later today, the Senate is going to vote to confirm Michelle T. Friedland to be a judge on the Ninth Circuit Court. You can read up on her here – she’s pretty darn impressive in both competence and politics. 

Oh, and by the way, the Senate will also appoint David Weill as the administrator of the Wages and Hours Division for the Department of Labor, you know, the people who stop low-wage workers from getting ripped off by their employers.

You probably haven’t read much of anything about either nomination. These appointments seem entirely unremarkable and ordinary. Frankly, they should be, it’s a routine part of making government function. And in the post-filibuster world, routine nominations, judicial and otherwise actually seem to be proceeding fairly smoothly for the first time in five years.

During the first four months of 2014, the Senate has confirmed 20 judicial nominations – the most of any of the first four months of any calendar year of the Obama administration. On average, Majority Leader Harry Reid seems to be confirming either one appeal court nominee or four district judges per week the Senate has been in session this year.

Things aren’t perfect.  In some cases Republicans are still blocking qualified nominees in committee through the blue slip system– like North Carolina’s Jennifer Prescod May-Parker. In other cases, Republicans aren’t providing any input on nominees at all – like in Texas while the state’s federal bench languishes, as Houston's ever-handy Charles Kuffner has pointed out. And in some cases, they are driving a hard line – insisting on having Obama nominate a large number of their nominees in exchange for seating a few of his, like in the Northern District of Georgia -- a deal that has irked the state's civil rights community. 

Even the Friedland nomination should have been voted on before the Senate left town for the Easter recess on April 10, but Republicans insisted upon using their allotted 15 hours of debate to slow down the nomination (though none of them actually planned to debate).

However, overall the nominees are both flowing in a more orderly manner through the confirmation process.  There are currently 50 judicial nominations awaiting action in the Senate (eight appeals and 42 district). Thirty-one of those have moved through the judiciary committee and are awaiting final confirmation.

Among those 31 include several  nominees from Arizona and South Carolina, who had been languishing for months in committee.

Once those are confirmed (hopefully by August) that will leave Obama with 50 appellate appointments and 214 district appointments – roughly on track to match George W. Bush’s total number of appointments.

Overall then, move to end the filibuster for most executive appointments seems to have been a good one.

Court upholds Ohio Medicaid expansion

Good news, via Ideastream (NE Ohio's public broadcaster)

The state’s highest court says it is constitutional to allow the controlling board, a panel of legislative leaders, to allow the Medicaid department to accept the federal funds that would allow for expansion of Medicaid. 

The Ohio General Assembly didn't vote to expand Medicaid, but Gov. John Kasich used the state's budget controlling board -- made up by several legislative leaders (several handpicked by Kasich) to accept the federal grants. The state Supreme Court ruled 4-3  that the board acted within its rights to accept the money for Ohio's Medicaid.

I'd have rather it gone through the legislature, but I'll take it -- as will the 275,000 Ohioans who are going to get health insurance.

Also, there's a long-term issue here -- the board has the power to accept grant money, but it has very limited power to expend state funds. Starting in 2017, the legislature is going to have to vote state monies to cover the state's share of the expansion or lose the federal money. By then of, course, we hope that the expansion will be tough to take away and the ledge will come in line. 

Post nuclear update III: The Senate grinds on... two nominees in, two up and eight more on deck

The Senate cleared one big appointment and one medium-sized one on Monday, confirming Jeh Johnson as Secretary of Homeland Security and Anne Patterson to be Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East. A steady stream of nominations will be on the floor this week as well. Follow all the action here.

Johnson’s case was particularly interesting, as Republicans yielded back their 15 hours of post-cloture debate time (For a cabinet official, there would be normally 30 hours of post-cloture time. The Democrats had been yielding their time back to save time, while the Republicans had been keeping theirs to slow things down). Maybe the GOP has realized it would like to get home for Christmas……

Senators also voted to end debate on two nominations. First up is Alejandro Mayorkas, the nominee for Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security (Yes, I know – a cabinet secretary and a deputy secretary in the same department confirmed in one week, that’s incredible). Second, the John Andrew Koskinen was cleared for a final vote to run the Internal Revenue Service. Koskinen moved out of a committee hearing last week and will be confirmed over the objections of Orin Hatch, a Utah Republican who is the ranking minority member on the committee.  Both will be confirmed today.

Reid also filed for cloture on eight more nominees. By far the biggest one is Janet Yellen, slated to become the first chairwoman of the Board of the Federal Reserve. I suspect the GOP will yield back their post-debate time on her too, since she seems to be a fairly popular nominee, despite some opposition.

After that, it’s the parade of deputies; aka the people who actually implement a lot of policy but aren’t that well known. Here we have six appointments up for consideration:

Sloan D. Gibson: Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs

Sarah Sewall: Under Secretary of State (Civility Security, Democracy, and Human Rights)

Michael L. Connor: Deputy Secretary of the Interior

Sarah Bloom Raskin, of Maryland: Deputy Secretary of the Treasury

Jessica Garfola Wright: Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness 

Then we have one judge thrown in for good measure:

Brian J. Davis: United States District Judge for the District of Florida

Finally, one member of an investigative board:

Richard Engler: Member of the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board 

I suspect we're going to see some more district judges (there's eight with committee approval awaiting a floor vote after Davis) and Robert Wilkens, Obama's third DC Circuit pick confirmed this week before the Senate recesses (perhaps  Carolyn McHugh for the 10th Circuit as well, who is also out of committee). I also speculate Reid will only let everyone go home after he gets unanimous consent to carry over all the existing nominees to the New Year.

For those of you scoring at home, we now have 12 nominees confirmed post-nuclear action (including one cabinet secretary, two circuit court judges, one housing secretary and four district court judges)

Post-nuclear Senate update: Pillard confirmed; more confirmations on the way

In a majority rule Senate, apparently a bit of Chai is enough to keep everyone working all night.

The "Chai" in question just happens to be Chai Rachel Feldblum, President Obama's long-stalled nominee for reappointment to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

As I write this, she's not stalled any more.

On Wednesday evening, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid asked for unanimous consent  to waive the post-cloture debate time on District Cornelia Pillard's nomination (which would have expired at 1 a.m. today) and invoke cloture on Feldblum, with confirmation votes to follow early this morning. As a result, every one could go home and get some sleep.

Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley objected.

So Reid kept the Senate in session all night.

This appears to be the equivalent of assigning Senate Republicans an eight-hour detention.

 Democrats confirmed Pillard at 1 a.m. by a vote of 51-44 and invoked cloture on Feldblum, 57-39.

After Feldblum gets confirmed for the EEOC this morning, the next up are four district court judges for the districts of Western New York, New Hampshire, and Montana (which has two vacancies). The appointments for New York and Montana will fill three judicial emergencies.

For those keeping score at home, that's two Circuit-Court judges, one chair of the Federal Housing Administration and one EEOC member. Incidentally, that's also three more well-qualified women and one more well-qualified African American in powerful positions in federal government. But who's counting?

This majority rule thing is kind of refreshing.

Post-filibuster stream of confirmations nears: Pillard first up followed by four district judges

So life in a post-nuclear Senate kicked off on Monday night.

We'll take the play-by-play from the Senate Democrats' floor report.

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D- Nevada) opened the proceedings at 6:43 p.m. by causally strolling up to the mike and agreeably asking for unanimous consent to move on all 80 executive and judicial nominations on the calendar.

(Watch closely kids, this is how you troll a legislative minority.)

Naturally, a Republican Senator (Lamar Alexander of Tennessee) objected, noting acidly that he wanted to see how the Senate would work without rules.

At 6:55 p.m. Reid then filed for cloture votes on 10 nominations. The first one of these for will occur on Wednesday morning at 11 a.m.

After each cloture vote, the motion will have to "ripen," meaning that debate and other parliamentary maneuvers can consumer up to a certain amount of time post-cloture.  According to the current rules, this time can exceed no more than 30 hours for cabinet-level posts or equivalents (Supreme Court Justices, Circuit Court Justices Federal Reserve Chairs, etc). For all other executive appointments, the amount of time is 8 hours, and for district judges the time is two hours.

So the first confirmation up is Nina Pollard at 10 a.m. local time for the D.C Circuit Court (Her cloture motion passed before the Thanksgiving recess, so the 30 hours on her motion has expired)

Starting Wednesday, we'll see cloture votes on four district court judges, five mid-level executive appointments and the Secretary for Homeland Security, Jeh Charles Johnson.

List of upcoming confirmations:

Judges:
Elizabeth A. Wolford (Western District New York -- a judicial emergency)
Landya B. McCafferty (District of New Hampshire)
Brian Morris (District of Montana -- judicial emergency)
Susan P. Watters (District of Montana -- judicial emergency)

Executive appointments:
Jeh Charles Johnson (Secretary of Homeland Security)
Deborah Lee James (Secretary of the Air Force)
Heather Anne Higginbottom (Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources)
Anne W. Patterson (Assistant Secretary of State, Near Eastern Affairs)
Chai Rachel Feldblum (Member, Equal Opportunity Commission)
Patricia M. Wald (Member, Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board)

 Some of these are boring, but putting them in place makes the government work that much better.

I would imagine that the other D.C. circuit justices, Melvin Watt at the Federal Housing Administration and Janet Yellen at the Federal Reserve, along another half dozen or so district judges and numerous other mid-level appointments will follow in short order next week.

The gears of functioning government are grinding slowly into motion.

From Consent to Advice -- other possible avenues to block judges in the Senate

Yesterday, we all crawled out from our radiation shelters to behold the charred remains of the Senate landscape. You see, Harry "Major Kong" Reid engaged the nuclear option last Thursday, blowing up chamber procedure and changing to require only a majority vote to end debate on executive and non-Supreme Court judicial nominations.

So now what? Over the short term, the confirmations should flow fairly quickly. There are currently four appeals (including the three D.C. circuit nominees) and 13 district court nominations that have passed through the Senate Judiciary Committee and are awaiting floor action. They should fly through in a jiffy in December.

Behind that immediate flurry, the picture gets a bit murkier. There are currently 93 vacancies on the federal bench --  18 on the appellate level and 75 at the district level. Getting the 17 easy confirmations out of the way leaves 76 slots (14 appellate and 62 district). Of these Obama has nominees for six appellate and 30 district vacancies.

There are two ways Republicans can slow down or block nominations to these vacant slots.

Millett and Watt confirmations imminent?

I just checked up on the Senate Executive Nominations Calendar, and the following two names appear on the first page:

UNANIMOUS CONSENT AGREEMENTS 

Melvin L. Watt (Cal. No. 209)

Ordered, That with respect to the vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the nomination of Melvin L. Watt, of North Carolina, to be Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency for a term of five years, the mandatory quorum required under Rule XXII be waived.

(October 28, 2013.)

Patricia Ann Millett (Cal. No. 327)

Ordered, That with respect to the vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the nomination of Patricia Ann Millett, of Virginia, to be United States Circuit Judge for the District of Columbia Circuit, the mandatory quorum required under Rule XXII be waived.

(October 28, 2013)

(Rule XXII is what gives the minority its filibuster power) 

Both Watt and Millett have been the subject of attacks from Republicans who want to block a more active Federal Housing Agency (which has been without a permanent head for years) and keep the President from placing any more nominees on the D.C Circuit Court. 

The DC Circuit is considered the second-most important court in the country, because it has jurisdiction over all federal agencies and its Conservative appointees have slowed or blocked the ability of federal agencies to protect worker rights, increase oversight on banks and other financial institutions, and protect the environment.

Millett is probably the least controversial of the three appointees for the D.C. Circuit Court, while Nina Pollard is the most controversial (she is known for her strong feminist views and record on Civil Rights; apparently believing in gender equality and civil rights is controversial nowadays)

I wonder if a deal has gone down trading Millett, Watt, Obama's other D.C. Circuit nominee Robert Wilkens, and Tom Wheeler as FCC chair in exchange for Pollard withdrawing her candidacy. I'd hate to lose Pollard's candidacy, but if Obama gets to name another appointee of his choice, it's win-win-win for the Democrats. 

I'm also wondering if Harry Reid has 51 votes to end the filibuster, at least for certain types of judicial nominees. That would explain the GOP's sudden move to surrender on two nominees that they hate a lot.

Either way, if this is true, it is good news for sane public policy.

(Note: please feel free to tell me if I'm misreading the Sen. Executive calendar -- it's entirely possible, though I tried to do my homework here.)  

(UPDATE:  10/31: And Watt just got filibustered. Looks like I was wrong. Nuts.)