(Menendez) Senator Says His Concerns With Nominee Aren’t Personal
Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey denied Friday that he was blocking an Obama administration nominee to a federal judgeship because of a grudge against her longtime companion, who led a corruption investigation of the senator during his tough election fight of 2006.
Instead, Mr. Menendez said, he has “substantive” concerns about her knowledge of constitutional issues.
Mr. Menendez is the first Democrat to hold up one of the Obama administration’s judicial nominees. The delay comes at a time when the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, has complained about the high number of vacancies on the federal bench — a tenth of judgeships are unfilled — and blamed Republican obstruction.
On Friday, Mr. Menendez came under new pressure from groups on the left, after news outlets reported that he was blocking a Judiciary Committee hearing for Patty Shwartz, a federal magistrate judge in Newark whom President Obama has nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Judge Shwartz was called “unanimously well qualified” in the American Bar Association’s review of her nomination.
full: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/07/nyregion/senator-robert-menendez-in-statement-airs-concerns-with-judge-patty-shwartz.html
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