CHIEF SUPPORTS NOMINEE In the confirmation hearing for Eric H. Holder Jr., President-elect Barack Obama's selection for attorney general, Louis J. Freeh, the former director of the F.B.I., said that Mr. Holder was drawn into a "corrupt act" when he became involved in the pardon of a fugitive businessman by Bill Clinton.
Writing in the Harvard Law Review, Henry Paul Monaghan describes how President George Washington's second Chief Justice nominee was not only a member of the original Constitution Convention, but an Associate Supreme Court Justice and acting Chief Justice, seeking a full-time appointment.
President Donald Trump has finally made his choice for NASA's next chief, but the nominee has been met with opposition from scientists as well as politicians on both sides of the aisle. .
All this happened in March in the context of the unprecedented Republican Senate blockade against providing a hearing or vote, and in many cases even a meeting, to the President's well-qualified Supreme Court nominee, Chief Judge Merrick Garland of the DC Circuit, who has previously been praised even by Senate Republicans.
"We do not comment on the merits of individual nominees," Chief Justice Roberts wrote on Friday.
On the pace of confirmation for judicial nominees, Chief Justice Rehnquist noted that in past years, he had criticized a Republican-controlled Senate for delays in considering President Bill Clinton's nominees.
No two justices are exactly alike – George W Bush's two successful nominees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, vote together most of the time but two of the exceptions prevented the Affordable Care Act from being struck down or substantially damaged.
Curt Levey, the executive director of the Committee for Justice, a conservative legal group, told a legal blog that among the possible nominees, Chief Justice Sears was one who had shown "at least some respect for the rule of law".
If the revamped LegCo was guaranteed one nominee for chief executive along with the others proposed by the Nominating Committee, then the election for chief executive would be truly competitive.
