Above: A Senate confirmation debate, Hollywood style. (Folks laughed when Betty White played a (female) senator from Kansas in this 1962 movie, "Advise and Consent". They hadn't yet heard of Nancy Kassebaum.)

- Confirm U.S. judges: U.S. Senate hobbles court - Salt Lake Tribune Editorial

Just in case you needed another illustration of dysfunction in Congress, here’s one. The Senate has delayed the confirmation of 20 federal judges, including a highly qualified nominee for the federal bench in Utah, because of partisan wrangling over another issue.
David Nuffer already has served the U.S. District Court for Utah as a magistrate judge, having been appointed in 1995. He’s a former president of the Utah Bar Association and he sailed through confirmation hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee without opposition in October. Yet the full Senate failed to vote on his confirmation this month, delaying the process until at least the end of January, when the Senate reconvenes.
The judicial nominations have been snagged by a bitter partisan row over the appointment of Dennis Cordray to be director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Republicans are holding the judicial confirmations hostage in their effort to deny the new bureau a director, even though many do not object to Cordray’s personal qualifications.
What they seek, rather, is to change the bureau itself. They want its chief executive to be a commission rather than a director and they want its funding to come directly from Congress rather than through the Federal Reserve.
This sort of legislative obstruction is a major source of frustration for most Americans, who cling to the apparently quaint idea that issues should be voted up or down independently on the merits. They are right.
Meanwhile, in Utah, the federal district court is short two full-time judges while its docket becomes ever more crowded. Justice delayed is justice denied, but it is impossible to hear cases in a timely fashion if there are too few judges on the bench. ...

- GOP should approve Obama's Fed nominees - Washington Post Editorial

... there is a great need to lower the partisan temperature around the Fed, especially with an election approaching in 2012. President Barack Obama’s newly announced choices to fill two vacancies on the Fed’s seven-member board could help to achieve the needed cooling-off.
One is a Democrat, Harvard financial economist Jeremy Stein. The other, Jay Powell, is a registered Republican — though undoubtedly more moderate than many in the post-Tea Party GOP.
The nomination of Stein and Powell represents an administration effort to stock the Fed with well-qualified professionals while extending an olive branch to Senate Republicans. The GOP should take it.

- With nominees lined up for confirmation, the Senate shirks its duty - Cleveland Plain Dealer Editorial

... With the GOP hoping to win back the White House and the Senate in 2012, Republicans ought to think twice about using tactics that could easily bite them in the future.
Preventing government from doing its work because key jobs remain unfilled is not what the majority of voters expect or want from either party.