The Senate adjourned earlier this week, even though it confirmed only half of the 38 judicial nominees awaiting a vote on the Senate floor. And the overwhelming majority of the blocked nominees cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee without a single negative vote.

This failure to confirm even many of the most uncontroversial nominees is the culmination of a concerted GOP strategy to delay as many of President Obama’s judges as much as possible, and it leaves Obama with fewer judges confirmed than any recent president:

The Senate’s failure to even hold a vote on these nominees leaves the federal judiciary with record vacancies — approximately one in nine federal judgeships are now vacant.

Notably, three of these vacancies are on just one court. Of the four active judgeships on the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois, three are presently vacant, leaving the court’s chief judge as its only active member. Two of President Obama’s nominees to this court, James Shadid and Sue Myerscough, were unanimously approved by the Judiciary Committee for this excessively overburdened court. Yet none of Obama’s nominees to the Central District of Illinois received a vote in the 111th Congress.

This failure to confirm anyone to this Illinois court may be the most reckless legacy of the right’s obstruction of Obama’s judges, but it isn’t even the most absurd. One of the president’s blocked nominees, District of Oregon nominee Marco Hernandez, was previously nominated for the exact same job by President George W. Bush. Somehow, now that he’s an Obama nominee, the GOP has suddenly decided to throw up roadblocks before his confirmation.

Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.

Rick Scott, the corrupt and fraudulent former health care executive who is soon to be Florida’s next Governor, received a report from his economic transition team this week that recommended he needs to crack down on the unemployed. Scott’s economic team, headed by the state’s most affluent business leaders, quoted research by former Obama administration official Alan Krueger to claim that the unemployed are lazy and need to be driven off unemployment benefits:

“According to [former U.S. Assistant Treasury Secretary Alan] Krueger’s research, the amount of time people on UC spent looking for a job averaged only 20 minutes a day! Within 2 weeks of UC ending, that increased but to only 70 minutes a day,” states the document, noting that the median duration of unemployment benefits receipt has increased nationally from 10 weeks to 18.7 weeks.

The team’s recommendations: tighten job-search requirements for people getting benefits, cut off assistance for those who don’t comply and assign community work for those who don’t get a job in 12 weeks. Goals: increase employment and reduce the payout of unemployment benefits, as well as the unemployment compensation tax burden on businesses.

Krueger, who is a well-regarded professor of economics at Princeton University, took issue with the characterization of his research.

First, he said, the research — which was conducted during the stronger economic period of the mid 2000s — actually shows that the average amount of time spent job-searching is double what the report says — more than 40 minutes a day, not 20.

Secondly, “the unemployed in the U.S. devote more time searching for a job than unemployed workers in other countries,” Krueger wrote in an e-mail, “yet they [Scott's team] make it seem that the unemployed put little effort into finding a job.”

And lastly, he added that the real problem faced by the unemployed today “is lack of jobs, not overly generous benefits.” The team, he said, “misspelled my name and misused my study!”

Unemployed Floridians reacted with disgust when told of the Scott team’s assertion. “That’s stupid,” said Freddy Pacheco, an unemployed 61-year-old woman. She told Tampa Bay Online that she spends about four or five hours a day, three days a week, looking for work. Unemployed Florida resident Laura Mroczko also dismissed the report. “Look around,” she said, pointing at a line of people at the Tampa Bay Workforce Alliance jobs agency searching for work. “These people are here looking for work. You can’t survive on what unemployment pays you.”

Tennessee’s state counter-terrorism officials at the Tennessee Fusion Center maintain an open-source internet map which identifies “terrorism events and other suspicious activity.” The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Tennessee found its way briefly onto the map earlier this month, after the civil rights group penned a letter to school superintendents encouraging “schools to be supportive of all religious beliefs during the holiday season.” The Chattanooga Times Free Press reports what happened next:

The Fusion Center’s Internet map is part of a national map maintained by globalincidentmap.com. Information is provided by agencies across the U.S. It includes various blinking icons. The map’s label originally was titled Terrorism Events and Other Suspicious Activity.

Near Nashville, a blinking hexagon-shaped symbol with an exclamation point read “ACLU cautions TN schools about ‘observing one religious holiday.’” The hexagon symbol, when clicked on, originally stated “suspicious activity.” But it later was changed to say “general nonincident terrorism news” after inquiries by reporters.

Mike Browning, a spokesman for the state’s Office of Homeland Security, acknowledged that listing ACLU’s letter as a terrorist incident “was a mistake.” ACLU-Tennessee Executive Director Hedy Weinberg responded, “I will take at their word that they made a mistake by posting it under terrorism activity…[but] I have not heard a good explanation for why school resource officers, who have a very important job in schools, would at all be interested or need to know about the letter we sent to local school superintendents about the need to keep holiday celebrations all inclusive.”

59-year old Manuel Lara Lopez has been a legal U.S. resident for 20 years, immigrating to Texas from Mexico like many immigrants to seek a better life. After being diagnosed with severe intestinal cancer, Lara pronounced his “dying wish was to become a U.S. citizen, and that wish was granted this week in his South Austin backyard.”

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agreed to come to his home and administer the citizenship exam ahead of his scheduled Jan. 2011 test date. After passing the exam, the USCIS granted Lara his Christmas wish by naturalizing him the following day — a rare occurrence. Marilu Cabrera, a spokeswoman for the agency, said, “because of his condition and it being so close to Christmas, we wanted to conduct a ceremony as soon as possible.” The Austin American-Statesman described the scene:

With his wife, two sons, grandchildren, other relatives and friends applauding, Lara proudly held up his certificate of citizenship and a small American flag as he sat at a table in his backyard. He waited until every camera had recorded the moment before he put them down.

“He talked about it for a long time,” said his wife, Adelina Hernandez Lara. She wiped tears as she spoke of his love for America and the bittersweetness of his dream finally becoming a reality so late in his life. [...]

“I wanted to be buried in the United States,” he said.

After the ceremony, Lara pronounced himself “muy feliz” (very happy). Watch it:

U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel, who administered the oath, “applauded the immigration agency for making it possible. After giving the oath, he said, ‘It’s a great day for America.’”

For decades, Lara worked in restaurants around Texas, cooking Mexican food for customers. He told the media that receiving U.S. citizenship was an important lesson he wanted to impart to his Mexican-born sons, who he hoped would follow his example and “learn from Papa.”

Lara’s story — which is representative of millions of undocumented immigrants who come to America — highlights the need for comprehensive immigration reform. As Andrea Nill notes, the process of legal immigration and naturalization in the U.S. is unduly burdensome and restrictive. With reform, perhaps more hard-working and responsible immigrants can achieve Lara’s Christmas miracle.