Miguel Estrada

“If they had been pulling out all the stops and working as hard as possible to get as many nominations as fast possible,” said former associate counsel in the Bush White House Rachel Brand, “they might have done the same as us.”

Buried in a profile of the controversial former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo in today’s Washington Post is the casual mention that the Justice Department is no longer representing Yoo to fight a lawsuit filed against him by Jose Padilla. Instead, GOP-connected lawyer and former Bush appellate court nominee Miguel Estrada has stepped into the [...]

Though Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) won’t say whether he’ll vote for or against Sonia Sotomayor, he used his opening statement to take a shot at the Democrats for blocking the confirmation of Miguel Estrada in 2003 — the Latino he said he’d prefer — and made clear that although he respects that President Obama won [...]

Neil Lewis writes about the oversized role that conservative bitterness is playing in the fight against Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. There’s a lot of focused on bruised feelings from the Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas hearings, and some focus on the more important precedent: the extended filibuster of Miguel Estrada, a nominee [...]