"Obama moving slowly on judges"

The title of this post is the headline of this new AP article.  Here are the basics:

Eight months into office, President Barack Obama is moving far more slowly than his predecessor to fill federal court vacancies, leaving liberals waiting for the judiciary to tilt to the left....

As of Oct. 1, Obama has submitted only eight nominees to fill 20 current appeals court vacancies. During his first full eight months in office, former President George W. Bush had nominations for filling 23 of 34 vacancies, according to figures compiled by the Alliance for Justice, a liberal court-watching group.

Obama has nominated only 10 people for 75 currently vacant district court judgeships. At this time in his first term, Bush had sent the Senate 32 district judge nominees for 81 then-vacant seats.

For sentencing fans, this is quite significant because the attitudes and approaches of lower federal judges are profoundly important on a range of still-open Booker issues and lots of other (old and newly emerging) constitutional sentencing issues. 

Some related posts:

• Should President Obama practice ageism when making judicial nominations?
• Names starting to emerge for early Obama circuit court nominees
• Noticing the biggest bias in the federal judiciary
• How a new administration is likely to impact federal sentencing practice
• Why federal sentencing reformers must focus on the USSC and lower courts
• Judging, politics, sentencing and elections
• A modest(?) proposal for filling the bench from the ivory tower
• Urging President-elect Obama to elevate district judges to the circuit courts