It Wasn't Republicans Who Stopped the Green Nomination

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

And if you're a corrupt District Attorney who falsely prosecuted two people you knew to be innocent and wrecked their lives in exchange for a federal judgeship ... then, apparently, you can lose your own soul in exchange for nothing.

Sometimes there is justice in this life.

But the real story of why the U.S. Senate and the White House scuttled Mike Green's judicial nomination has nothing to do with partisan games on Capitol Hill, or action by Republicans.   Quite the opposite.

National Level

Republicans in the U.S. Senate only infrequently use threat of filibuster to stop the President's judicial nominees, and then -- and this is the important part -- only for nominees to the Circuit Courts of Appeals.   Not for District Court appointments, such as Green's.   They're slowing some of those nominations, but not blocking them.

And they're not the ones who determine the list of nominations "sent back" to the President, as happened to Green.   The Democrats who run the Senate decide that.

Senatorial Democrats could have kept Green on the list of nominations "carried over" to the next session.   They chose not to.

They carried over other District Court nominees.

Democrats control the U.S. Senate, which votes on nominations.   Both U.S. Senators from New York are Democrats, so there wasn't an issue of a senator from the nominee's state putting a "hold" on the nomination, which can happen, and was responsible for a Tulsa district court nominee being sent back.   One of those senators is Charles Schumer, who sits on the Judiciary Committee and is past Chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

With that clout, with the majority, and with Senate Republicans saving their filibistering for nominees to federal appeals courts, not district courts, Democratic Senators could have made it happen for Green.

They chose not to.

Schumer is as happy a partisan warrior as anyone on Capitol Hill.   If Senate Republicans were killing the Green nomination, he'd have been highly vocal about it, to say the least.   Instead, we heard his suprisingly lukewarm comments last week.   Today, making lemonade out of the lemon, he's made the obligatory boilerplate statement saying Republicans scuttled it, the usual stuff of Washington's partisan miasma.

Local Level

Republican insiders in Monroe County, including those at the highest level, wanted Green to be confirmed.   Better that, they reasoned, than having him around as a potential Democratic candidate for a state judgeship or other office.

Washington is far outside the bubble of media protection the Democrat and Chronicle provides its favorites, like Green, Bob Duffy, Louise Slaughter, Joe Morelle, David Gantt and other undesirables.   Outside of it, the process crushed Green like a bug.

However, back home and at large, and back inside the protective media bubble, he's a potentially formidable candidate for Democrats to run for something.   So Monroe County Republicans felt it was better to have him kicked upstairs to the federal bench, and be out of the way.

That's why the County GOP Chairman has said publicly that he supports Green's nomination.   He's speaking for his party, and they mean it.

Part of the reason Green could be a formidable candidate is the fault of Monroe County Republicans.   In one of their occasional moments of testosterone deficiency, County Republicans chose not to pursue ethics charges against Green after his false prosecutions against Andrew Moore and James Smith went down for utter lack of substance.   That's a subject for another time (although we note that it's still not too late to do).

It all begs a single question: W-H-Y-?

Why did the Senate Democratic leadership single out Mike Green's as one of the few District Court nominations they sent back to the White House?

Why didn't Senator Schumer use his considerable clout to push it through?

Why did the White House announce -- very promptly -- that the President would not renominate Green?

Back here, in Rochester's bubble of media protection, WHY? is the question the Democrat and Chronicle doesn't want anybody asking.   Which is why they print such falsehoods as the one in this morning's front-page teaser:   "Republicans sent the nomination back."

No they didn't.   Democrats sent it back.   And a Democratic President said there wouldn't be a re-nomination.

W-H-Y-?

What do Senate leaders and the President know about Mike Green, that the people of Monroe County do not?