According to the HuffPo:
The Senate Judiciary Committee is poised to send at least eleven nominations to the floor, likely this Thursday. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), meanwhile, has expressed his desire to hold a vote on one or a few of those nominees before the caucus leaves for its upcoming retreat.
"We should expect to see anywhere from one to a handful of votes on judicial nominees end of the week or early next week," a Senate Democratic leadership aide said.
The idea, explained the aide, is to test whether an informal agreement between Republicans and Democrats to either filibuster less or expedite the confirmation process has had any tangible impact.
Very interesting.
I would also like to know if the informal agreement has had any tangible impact. But I wouldn't necessarily want to test that with judicial nominations, since there actually was no mention of judicial nominations in the agreement.
There was a general agreement to begin working toward the passage of legislation that would cut down on the number of executive branch nominations subject to Senate approval, but there was no agreement on judicial nominations. This despite the problem now having become a chief complaint both of Democrats in recent years, and of Republicans in 2004 and 2005.
So, yeah. I'd be rather curious about whether that agreement for some reason produces an impact on judicial nominations. I think it very well may, in the sense that both sides are anxious to have it look like it did. And one way to help that along would be to move only non-controversial nominees. Lo and behold:
The nominees being re-considered by the Judiciary Committee were categorized as non-controversial holdovers from the last Senate session.
But if, at the end of the day, it simply looks like those nominations sailed through, those nominees move to the bench just the same as if there really were an agreement on judges. That's fine, as far as those nominations go. Let's remember, after all, that non-controversial or not, those nominations didn't go through last time, because there was a partisan fight going on. Now, everyone has an interest in extending the period of calm during which they hope it will appear that there is not such a fight. Side benefits: these judges get through, and the agreement looks to be more powerful and more far-reaching than it really is. Both would be positive developments. The question will be whether there's any reason to believe it would happen repeatedly.