Speakers at the Republican National Convention have accused Democrats of obstructing the judicial system by not confirming all of President Bush’s nominees to the federal bench. However, an examination of the record shows that not only are Republican nominees being confirmed at a rate faster than judges appointed by Bill Clinton, all but a handful of Bush’s most extreme nominees have been approved by the Senate.

Moreover, this was done as Senate Republicans ignored traditions and rules that had been used for years to assure bi-partisan cooperation.

Political harangue notwithstanding, of the 226 nominations Bush has made to the federal courts, the Senate has approved 198 or 88 percent of them. During Clinton’s first term, he nominated 239 judges and 202 or 85 percent were confirmed. Of the 876 federal district and appellate seats, only 28 – 3 percent – are now vacant. That represents the lowest vacancy rate in two decades.

Bush – who considers Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia paragon Supreme Court justices – has run into difficulty only when he has tried to get his most extreme appointees seated.

For example, he wanted to appoint California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Brown, a frequent dissenter on a court where six of the seven justices were appointed by Republican governors, was described by People for the American Way as “to the right of Thomas and Scalia.” She was never approved.

When Bush couldn’t get Judge Charles Pickering Sr., whose rulings have generally been hostile to civil rights, elevated to the appeals level by the Senate, he appointed the Mississippi judge during a congressional recess, bypassing the confirmation process. He did the same with former Alabama Atty. Gen. Bill Pryor, another nominee with a similar background.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) typifies the hard-ball politics that Republicans play. The committee has had in place what it calls a “blue slip” policy, meaning that if either home-state senator objected to a nomination to the federal bench, it would not go forward. When Clinton was president, Hatch did not allow a single nominee to be considered without the support of both home state senators.

After Bush assumed office, however, Hatch ditched that tradition as Republicans tried to ram through controversial nominees. The Judiciary Committee proceeded with the nominations of Carolyn Kuhl to the Ninth Circuit and Henry Saad, Richard Griffin and David McKeague to the Sixth Circuit although both Michigan senators objected to the nominations. Hatch ultimately failed, when all three nominations were rejected.

Another tradition, one that required the support of at least one member of the minority party before debate on any matter could be terminated, was also jettisoned by Hatch.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee has been equally hypocritical. Today, he says: “If filibusters are going to be made part of the judicial nominee process, I think you will see increasing discussion over whether the rules should be changed.”

But he saw no need for the rules to change when he favored a continued filibuster against Clinton’s nomination of Richard Paez to the Ninth Circuit. When that failed, he voted to indefinitely postpone a vote on the Peaz nomination.

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, has accused Bush of attempting to “turn the independent federal judiciary into an arm of the Republican Party.”

If the judiciary is not an arm of the GOP, it is moving close to becoming one.

Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice, a group dedicated to promoting an independent judiciary, has noted that 53 percent of the federal judiciary is made up of Republican appointees. They are in the majority in 10 of the 13 federal circuits. By the end of the year, she predicts, Republican appointees will control all but one circuit.

In an analysis of the judicial nominations, Ralph G. Neas, president of the People for the American Way, observes: “Having engaged in raw abuses of power when it comes to judicial nominations, Republicans leaders now have the temerity to claim that the Democrats are not playing by the rules. Part of the Administration’s ‘obstructionism’ charge is that Senate Democrats are using what the Republicans call an illegitimate and unprecedented means – the filibuster – to prevent the most extreme of the President’s judicial nominees from being confirmed. This charge, like the charge of ‘obstructionism’ itself, is also patently untrue.”

That’s the truth.