Jennifer Watson: Sen. Grassley is 'blue-slipping' Trump's judicial appointees

To The Daily Sun,

In junior high I was nominated for a class office. I ran against a confident student named Donnie. When the votes were tallied, I had lost by one vote — mine. I didn’t vote against myself intentionally. Rather I had been raised to be considerate of others, and in my naïveté assumed that, out of courtesy, I would vote for Donnie and he would vote for me. Donnie had no such misguided notions. He voted for himself and won the election.

Dec. 9, I learned about an analogous situation playing out in the U.S. Congress. Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley is blocking some of President Donald Trump’s judicial appointees by using blue slips, a tradition where the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee sends a blue slip to home state senators with the name of a judicial nominee. If the senator of that state doesn’t return the blue slip, the nominee won’t receive a hearing and can never advance in the process. Sen. Grassley is “blue-slipping” Trump’s appointees in states with Democratic senators. Grassley doesn’t have to do this. “Blue-slipping” is not a rule; Wikipedia describes it as a “senatorial courtesy.”

Today our country is in a fight for its life, and the election of Donald Trump is evidence that the people do not want things to go on as they have. They want to see progressive judges who release criminals back onto our streets and U.S. attorneys who throw out legitimate cases replaced with judges and attorneys who will uphold the law and the Constitution.

In using blue slips, Republican Sen. Grassley is either guilty of the same “courteous” naiveté I showed as a pre-teen or he intends to block the appointees of the president while trying to side-step the blame. We Americans should insist he bring these nominees to a Senate vote.

Jennifer Watson

Laconia