The Senate Judiciary Committee announced today that it will hold a hearing next week on the nomination of Jane Kelly to be a judge on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. This is great news, and not only because she's an excellent nominee: It also shows how efficiently the nomination and confirmation process can work.

During the summer, circuit Judge Mike Melloy announced that he would be taking senior status early in 2013. Since he is from Iowa, his replacement would also be from Iowa, and Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin launched a process to identify qualified nominees to recommend to the White House. He forwarded two names in November, and the White House – after a full vetting process that takes many weeks – announced its nomination of Kelly on January 31, just one day after the vacancy formally opened up. Sen. Harkin's speed was an essential part of keeping this vacancy open for as short a time as possible.

Iowa's other senator is also playing a key role in moving the process along, because the Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy will not hold a hearing on a nominee until both home-state senators give their approval (or, in Senate lingo, "submit their blue slips"). That senator is none other than the committee's ranking Republican, Chuck Grassley, who in this case quickly gave his approval to a clearly qualified nominee. So three weeks after the nomination was announced, the hearing has been scheduled.

Kelly is a terrific nominee who has dedicated her career to defending those who cannot afford to pay for legal representation. She has been an Assistant Federal Public Defender in Iowa since 1994. She would be the first public defender to sit on the Eighth Circuit, bringing an important element of professional diversity to the court. She would also be the first woman from Iowa to serve on the Eighth Circuit and only the second woman to serve on that court.

With the president, White House staff, and Sens. Harkin and Grassley all working together to quickly fill a vacancy with a highly qualified nominee, the process is moving along at an excellent pace. We look forward to the hearing and a timely committee vote, and we hope that she will then expeditiously get a confirmation vote from the full Senate.

This morning, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved five nominees to serve on federal district courts in New York, California and Florida and on the US Court of International Trade. A week ago, Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley postponed votes on all five nominations without giving a reason, a delaying tactic that he has used on 97 percent of President Obama’s judicial nominees who the committee has voted on.

Sen. Grassley did not explain the reason for the delay last week, when a coalition of Iowa and national groups urged him to stop such routine delays. And the reason remained unclear today, as all five nominees were approved without opposition.

These five nominees now join fifteen other federal judicial nominees awaiting confirmation votes from the full Senate. The Senate has made progress by scheduling confirmation votes on four unopposed district court nominees in the past week, but that small amount of progress isn’t nearly enough to fill the gaps in overworked federal courts. Seven of the nominees still waiting for votes would fill officially-designated “judicial emergencies.”

It would be easy, of course, for the Senate to hold votes on all of the remaining nominees before the end of the year. After all, most were approved by the Judiciary Committee many months ago. But Senate Republicans have continued to stall even nominees with strong bipartisan support. All the circuit court nominees waiting for votes have the support of their home-state senators, Republican and Democratic, and nearly all of the pending district court nominees were approved by the Judiciary Committee with unanimous or nearly unanimous bipartisan support. One circuit court nominee, New Jersey’s Patty Shwartz, has been waiting nine months just for an up-or-down vote from the Senate; Federal Circuit nominee Richard Taranto has also been waiting since March.

If the Senate fails to vote on these nominees during the lame duck, the confirmation process – from presidential nomination through floor vote – will have to start all over again next year.

Notable about the district court nominees approved by the Judiciary Committee today is that all are women or people of color, representative of President Obama’s efforts to bring diversity to the federal courts. The nominees also include New York’s Pamela Chen, who would become just the fifth openly gay person to be confirmed to a lifetime federal judgeship.

Florida Governor Rick Scott has reversed the policy of his predecessor, fellow Republican Charlie Crist, of automatically restoring suffrage to non-violent offenders who have completed their sentences. Iowa Governor Terry Branstad earlier reversed a similar policy in his state.

Florida once again requires ex-offenders to wait five years before applying to have their voting rights restored, rejoining Iowa, along with Virginia and Kentucky, as the only states that withhold suffrage for ex-offenders once released from state supervision. Florida actually leads the nation in denying voting rights to ex-offenders, and even more could be disenfranchised thanks to the efforts to purge the voter rolls. Overall, over 10% of Floridians are now disenfranchised, including nearly a quarter of African Americans.

In Governor Scott’s defense, Press Secretary Lane Wright claimed:

Some people look to make any issue they can about race or politics. The issue of convicted felons voting rights is about neither one.

Clearly the facts tell a different story.

This is part of a pattern throughout the South of disenfranchisement of people with past felony convictions that disproportionately affects African American and Hispanic voters. More than four million Southerners are now denied their right to vote because of these policies.

For more information, check out The Right to Vote under Attack: The Campaign to Keep Millions of Americans from the Ballot Box, a Right Wing Watch: In Focus report by PFAW Foundation.

As we like to remind anyone who will listen, the current GOP senate has been shameless in its enthusiasm for obstructing judicial nominees just for the sake of obstruction. For instance, a PFAW memo on August 2 reported that of 24 nominees then waiting for confirmation votes, 21 had been voted through the Senate Judiciary Committee with no recorded opposition. Instead of sending through at least the unopposed nominees in a voice vote and moving on with its business, the Senate decided to keep these potential jurists off the bench for as long as possible – despite the pressing problem of unfilled judicial seats leading to slowed down justice. Ultimately, 4 of those nominees were confirmed by the Senate before it left for its August recess, and 20 remain waiting. (The Washington Post this morning lamented that such “gamesmanship is not only frustrating but also destructive”)

This sort of thing is a clear example of obstruction for obstruction’s sake. But what about the nominees who do face some GOP opposition? Last week, The Atlantic’s Andrew Cohen took an in-depth look at some of President Obama’s nominees who were ultimately confirmed by the Senate, but who received more than 25 “no” votes. The reason? Most were opposed because of a record fighting for civil liberties or against big corporations. Here are a few of Cohen’s examples:

7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge David Hamilton (Votes 59-39). Even though his local Federalist Society endorsed this nephew of former Congressional leader Lee Hamilton, Senate Republicans mostly didn't because, as a trial judge, Hamilton had issued this 2005 ruling which had infuriated the religious right. Citing Supreme Court precedent, Judge Hamilton had ruled that Indiana's legislative prayer before each session could no longer be "sectarian" and regularly invoke the name of Jesus Christ.

Northern District of Ohio Judge Benita Y. Pearson (Votes 56-39). The first black female federal jurist in Ohio almost didn't get the gig. The precise reasons why are unclear. The People for the American Way suggested that she was a member of an animal rights group and thus earned the wrath of those in the cattle industries -- although 39 "no" votes is quite a lot of beef to have against a pioneering jurist.

District of Colorado Judge William J. Martinez (Votes 58-37). By contrast, it is not hard to understand why this Mexico-born nominee roused so much Republican opposition on the floor of the Senate. Before he was nominated, Martinez advised the Americans with Civil Liberties Union and was a lawyer for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (just like Clarence Thomas before him, only Justice Thomas' EEOC experience evidently was a boon for his nomination). Of nominee Martinez, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said: "It seems that if you've got the ACLU DNA you've got a pretty good leg up to being nominated by this president."

District of Rhode Island Judge John J. McConnell (Votes 50-44). It's also fairly clear why Judge McConnell almost didn't make it onto the bench. Senate Republicans didn't like him because the U.S. Chamber of Commerce didn't like him because, as a lawyer, McConnell had successfully sued Big Tobacco and fought for those harmed by lead paint. Evidently that's five Republican votes more serious in the Senate than ticking off Big Beef.

Northern District of California Judge Edward M. Chen (Votes 56-42). Like Judge Martinez, Edward Chen evidently was touched with the "ACLU gene," which rendered him objectionable to Senate Republicans. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), whose state's Asian population is nearly three times lower than the American average, voted against Chen because he thought the well-respected former magistrate judge employed the "empathy standard" of judging.

District of Oregon Judge Michael H. Simon (Votes 64-35). Harvard educated? Check. Prior government experience with the Justice Department? Check. So why 35 "no" votes? Because Simon had worked for the ACLU. The seat he took on the federal bench, reported the Oregonian, had been vacant for 664 days, two months short of two years. How would you like to have been a litigant in Oregon during that time?

All of these nominees were ultimately confirmed – but not after plenty of stalling and debate over the value of “ACLU DNA” or of holding big corporations accountable for their actions. When we talk about the many nominees who are unopposed yet unaccountably stalled, it’s important to remember that the few nominees who do face GOP opposition don’t always face that opposition for the most convincing of reasons.