Few if any courts are more handicapped by the judicial vacancy crisis than the United States District Court for the District of Arizona. After the murder of Chief Judge John Roll in the same mass shooting that targeted Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), there are currently three vacancies on this court. And the Judicial Conference of the United States believes that eight additional judges are required to keep up with the court’s exploding caseload, where felony case filings alone nearly doubled from 3,023 in 2008 to 5,219 in 2010.

Yet, despite this pressing need, Arizona’s two senators have done little but throw roadblocks in the way of confirming new judges. Traditionally, a president will not nominate district court judges without consulting with a potential nominee’s home-state senators. Yet Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) delayed so long in sending names to President Obama that even the Republican chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals that includes Arizona was pleading with them to stop holding things up. When Obama nominated two people to fill the longest-standing vacancies on this court, court watchers hoped that this was the end of McCain and Kyl’s roadblocks — but it appears that the two senators are now back up to their old tricks:

President Obama did his part by nominating two women to fill those vacancies. One of those, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jennifer Guerin Zipps already has the green light.

But Rosemary Marquez, a defense lawyer working out of a downtown Tucson office, is being held up by Arizona’s two Senators. [...]

The average judge nationwide handles 566 actions. An Arizona judge handles 854. And those numbers are constantly climbing.

Although nominees to more powerful court of appeals judgeships have previously been the subject of political warfare, conservative obstruction of district court nominees was unheard of prior the Obama presidency. District judges spend the overwhelming majority of their time on routine, non-ideological issues such as trial scheduling, sentencing hearings, and routine jury instructions. So, by blocking Marquez’ nomination to a district court, McCain and Kyl are depriving their constituents of a desperately needed public servant without even gaining much of anything ideologically in return.

Besides Muammar Qaddafi, Rick Perry may be having the worst day in politics. His extremist belief that everything from consumer protection to Social Security to federal child labor laws is unconstitutional keep dogging him on the campaign trail.

Now he’s been caught on tape in South Carolina comparing the civil rights movement to the GOP’s fight for lower corporate taxes and deregulation. He could hardly have picked a worse day to fundamentally misunderstand and misrepresent the struggle for civil rights in America. Today marks the opening of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial to commemorate the great civil rights leader who died marching for economic justice for poor communities. In Rock Hill, South Carolina, a reporter pointed out to Perry that this year also marks the 50th anniversary of a historic sit-in in the town:

QUESTION: And coming to the Old Town Bistro you’re actually visiting a very important place in Rock Hill and the nation’s civil rights history. This year we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Friendship Nine sit-in here. Care to comment on that?

PERRY: Listen, America’s gone a long way from the standpoint of civil rights and thank God we have. I mean we’ve gone from a country that made great strides in issues of civil rights. I think we all can be proud of that. And as we go forward, America needs to be about freedom. It needs to be about freedom from overtaxation, freedom from over-litigation, freedom from over-regulation. And Americans regardless of what their cultural or ethnic background is they need to know that they can come to America and you got a chance to have any dream come true because the economic climate is gonna be improved.

Watch it, courtesy of American Bridge:

To compare the “struggles” of corporations who often pay virtually nothing in taxes to the plight of black Americans in pre-Civil Rights America is remarkably ignorant, even for Perry. Martin Luther King Jr. argued that economic rights for the poor were as essential as political rights, and was a great advocate for unions and the very anti-poverty programs that Perry believes are unconstitutional. While King fought for a living wage and more welfare for the poor, Perry fights for more corporate welfare.

(HT: AmericaBlog)

Last November, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) published Fed Up, a 240-page ode to tentherism, which argues that everything from child labor laws to the Clean Air Act to Medicare violates the Constitution. As it turns out, however, claiming that America’s entire social safety net is unconstitutional isn’t a very popular position — so Perry’s now trying to take it all back just one week into his presidential campaign:

[Perry's] communications director, Ray Sullivan, said Thursday that he had “never heard” the governor suggest [Social Security] was unconstitutional. Not only that, Mr. Sullivan said, but “Fed Up!” is not meant to reflect the governor’s current views on how to fix the program. [...]

In an interview, Mr. Sullivan acknowledged that many passages in Mr. Perry’s “Fed Up!” could dog his presidential campaign. The book, Mr. Sullivan said, “is a look back, not a path forward.” It was written “as a review and critique of 50 years of federal excesses, not in any way as a 2012 campaign blueprint or manifesto,” Mr. Sullivan said.

The campaign’s disavowal of “Fed Up!” is itself very new. On Sunday evening, at Mr. Perry’s first campaign stop in Iowa, a questioner asked the governor to talk about how he would fix the country’s rickety entitlement programs. Mr. Perry shot back: “Have you read my book, ‘Fed Up!’ Get a copy and read it.”

Fed Up is not some 20-year-old graduate school thesis that Perry wrote before he served in elected office. It is a substantial, nationally published manifesto that Perry was proudly signing at book tours just a few months ago. Indeed, as recently as last Monday, Perry was on the campaign trail citing Fed Up for the unusual proposition that “I don’t think the federal government has a role in your children’s education.” Watch it:

After just a few days of embarrassing press, however, Perry now expects the country to believe that his entire book was not intended to be a factual statement.