To the editor:

The comments in the Saturday Column about the actions of Senate Democrats with respect to Bush’s judicial nominees do not present a balanced picture.

Since Bush assumed the presidency, 168 of his nominations have been confirmed by the Senate. The handful that have been blocked are persons whose background gives ample reason to doubt their ability to be unbiased.

Contrast that record, 168 and 6, with what the Republicans did to Clinton’s nominees in the year 2000 alone. Of the 81 nominees that Clinton sent to the Senate, the Republican leadership allowed only 39 to reach the Senate for a vote. Forty-two of those nominees were blocked and remained without ever having been voted on when Clinton’s term ended. Thirty-eight of those were not even given a hearing by Orrin Hatch’s Judiciary Committee. Christine Arguello, a former member of the Kansas University law faculty and one eminently well-qualified to be a federal judge, was one whose nomination was thus thwarted by the Republicans’ wholesale blocking policy. Even Chief Justice Rehnquist had to chide his fellow conservatives for their irresponsible actions.

The record is quite clear that if Bush puts up reasonable nominees, they will be voted on in due course, as 168 others already have been. Bush certainly knows this. So who is causing the “deepening division” that the Saturday Column, and I, deplore?

Robert C. Casad,

Lawrence