The Real Reason Sen. Shelby Is Blocking All Obama Nominations

Turnabout's fair play.

GOP Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama took the unusual but perfectly legal move of placing a blanket hold on a number of Obama's nominees now before the Senate..and to hear the Left's collective tantrum over it, you'd think he was holding up badly needed funds for our troops under fire or something.

Oh, wait - that's the Democrat's specialty, remember?

Here's what 's actually going down.Senator Shelby, has a legislative hold on Obama's nominations. That means that until he lifts the hold, none of these nominations can proceed to a floor vote for confirmation.

In spite of what Useful Idiots like Ezra Klein have to say about the matter, Shelby is not 'shutting down government'.

Except there are rules for dealing with legislative holds just as there are rules to remove that hold. The Democrats simply don't think any Senate rules apply to them, apparently.

As a matter of fact, in the last option, Prez Zero could make recess appointments. Remember what George W. Bush was forced to do to get John Bolton appointed as UN Ambassador?

And speaking of Bolton, remember the obstructions the Democrats put on him and Bush nominations like Janice Rogers Brown and Bill Pryor and many others as federal judges?

As a matter of fact, as the WAPO points out, even Barack Obama used this maneuver against Bush nominees back when he was Senator Zero:

In 2005, a year after his election to the Senate, Obama placed a hold on Susan Bodine to lead the Environmental Protection Agency office that oversees Superfund and emergency cleanup programs because the agency had missed a deadline on new regulations for lead paint exposure.

In September 2006, Obama and Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) blocked Robert L. Wilkie's nomination as a Defense Department assistant secretary over a long-delayed Pentagon report on Midwestern wind farms.

And Obama joined with other Democrats in October 2007 to block the nomination of Hans von Spakovsky to the Federal Election Commission. Von Spakovsky later withdrew; Wilkie and Bodine were eventually confirmed.

Here's what Obama had to say today:

"The confirmation of well-qualified public servants shouldn't be held hostage to the pet projects or grudges of a few individual senators."

Can we say whining lil' hypocrite? Yes we can!

Here's what Senator Shelby's office had to say about the matter, from the Left bent TPM:

Sen. Shelby has placed holds on several pending nominees due to unaddressed national security concerns. Among his concerns is that nearly 10 years after the U.S. Air Force announced plans to replace the aging tanker fleet, we still do not have a transparent and fair acquisition process to move forward. The Department of Defense must recognize that the draft Request for Proposal needs to be significantly and substantively changed.

Sen. Shelby is also deeply concerned that the Administration will not release the funds already appropriated to the FBI to build the Terrorist Explosives Devices Analytical Center. This decision impedes the U.S. military, the intelligence community, and federal law enforcement personnel in their missions to exploit and analyze intelligence information critical to fighting terrorism and ensuring American security worldwide. The Obama Administration wants to read terrorists our Miranda rights and try them in U.S. courts but is impeding the processing of evidence that could lead to convictions. If this administration were as worried about hunting down terrorists as it is about the confirmation of low-level political nominations, America would be a safer place.

The administration claims to take a tough stance in fighting terrorism, yet the fiscal year 2011 budget request proposes to rescind these funds, contradicting the concerns of the FBI Director and the commander of the U.S. Army's Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO), both of whom are responsible for the safety of soldiers and agents fighting on the front lines in Afghanistan and Iraq. There is currently a 20-year backlog of forensic evidence that has been extracted from explosive devices, many of which were used to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. JIEDDO projects that submissions to the FBI could reach as high as 1,500 to 2,500 boxes per month when the war-fighting season in Afghanistan resumes in the Spring of 2010.

Evidence from the backlog examined by the FBI has matched the fingerprints of individuals applying for positions with the Iraqi National Police force, as well as individuals who have moved to the United States. The backlog continues to grow, sitting idly filling multiple warehouses, as the administration proposes to cut funding for the FBI that would allow them to more expeditiously process this evidence.

Sen. Shelby will continue to work with the FBI to give them the capability to coordinate intelligence as well as forensic and technical exploitation related to IEDs, but this administration's coddling of terrorists makes this an uphill effort. He has made the Administration aware of these concerns and is willing to discuss them at any time.

OK, full disclosure. Both the Terrorist Explosives Devices Analytical Center and the new tankers are supposed to be built in Alabama, which means that aside from any national security concerns he has, Senator Shelby is trying to create some jobs for his constituents. Compared to the blatant corruption we've seen practiced by the Obama Administration thus far, this is pretty tame. And I think the money would be far better spent on national security projects than in providing up to $4 billion to ACORN.

Another thing..who are some of these nominees? Most of the news reports don't mention them, and I'm guessing there's are some pretty good reasons why not.

I have a feeling that the country would be better off with most of them out of government anyway.

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