As Travis Waldron explained this morning, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) put a hold on a transportation bill that has broad bipartisan support in an attempt to force the Senate to enact his preferred policy on aid to Egypt. Although Paul’s tactic cannot prevent the widely supported bill from passing if Majority Leader Reid Harry (D-NV) decides to force the issue, Paul’s recalcitrance can force the Senate to waste up to 30 hours of floor time before it can receive a final vote.

Unfortunately, Paul is not just restricting this obstructionist tactic to one bill:

Paul is holding up confirmation of one of President Obama’s judicial nominees, Adalberto Jose Jordan, to the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. The nomination cleared a procedural hurdle with an overwhelming 89-5 vote Monday evening.

But Paul is forcing the Senate to conduct at least some of the remaining 30 hours of required debate on the judicial nominee. Often, that time requirement is waived by senators when an issue gains wide bipartisan support.

Thirty hours does not sound like a lot, until you multiply it across all the other business that the Senate needs to consider. Indeed, if Paul can force 30 hours of delay every time the Senate tries to confirm a single nominee, he can prevent Congress from completing any other business for years:

This is why the Senate’s broken rules cannot coexist with the Tea Party. So long as there are just a handful of senators willing to engage in maximal delay over petty disagreements, each individual member of the Senate cannot enjoy this power to gum up the entire body.

Texas federal Judge Fred Biery is a key villain in GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’s narrative about why federal judges are out of control and must be intimidated into submission. Gingrich routinely cites a previous decision by Biery holding that the Constitution does not permit a public school district to sponsor a student-led prayer at graduation to justify eliminating courts that displease Gingrich.

Fortunately, the actual parties to this lawsuit were not nearly as unreasonable as Mr. Gingrich, and they eventually agreed to settle the case after mediation. In his order approving the settlement, Biery includes an unusual “personal statement” directed at the many lawmakers who, like Gingrich, have painted him as some kind of enemy of religion:

To the United States Marshal Service and local police who have provided heightened security: Thank you.

To those Christians who have venomously and vomitously cursed the Court family and threatened bodily harm and assassination: In His name, I forgive you.

To those who have prayed for my death: Your prayers will someday be answered, as inevitably trumps probability.

To those in the executive and legislative branches of government who have demagogued this case for their own political goals: You should be ashamed of yourselves.

Biery also includes a clever dig and the many Christian right groups that have attacked him: “Any American can pray, silently or verbally, seven days a week, twenty four hours a day, in private as Jesus taught or in large public events as Mohammed instructed.”

Last month, a bill intended to combat the nearly non-existent problem of courts citing Sharia law was cruising to passage in the Virginia House of Delegates. For the moment, however, the bill appears to be dead after numerous business groups stepped forward to oppose it:

One bill, HB825 from Republican Del. Bob Marshall of Prince William County, would have prohibited judges and state administrators from using any legal code established outside the United States to make decisions. [...]

But when legislators started hearing from business groups concerned about how the proposal could affect their dealings abroad and foreign companies located here, they sent the bill back to committee.

“I had some business concerns,” said Del. Terry Kilgore, R-Scott County, after making the motion Thursday to kick back the bill. “It’s just something that needs some work.”

It’s unfortunate, if far from unexpected, that similar protests from religious groups, both Islamic and otherwise, were not enough to kill the bill. Nevertheless, the emergence of business opposition to these sorts of bills is a very important development.

The first wave of anti-Islamic bills introduced in state legislatures specifically named “Sharia” or Islamic law as off limits to state court judges. Such laws are unambiguously unconstitutional, as the First Amendment forbids any law that exists for the sole purpose of lashing out at a particular faith. Del. Marshall’s bill short circuits this constitutional limit because it does not expressly call out something unique to a particular faith. Instead, it paints with a broad brush by forbidding citations to any legal code that’s not established in the United States.

The problem with this tactic, however, is that there are all kinds of legitimate reasons why a judge may need to rely on foreign legal sources in order to render a decision. Most significantly, contracts between U.S. and foreign companies frequently require any disputes between them to be resolved under a foreign nation’s law. Needless to say, business don’t like it when lawmakers take away an important tool that they need to conduct international business just to push back against some baseless fantasy about judges lining up to replace the Constitution with Islamic law.

So the punchline is that anti-Islamic lawmakers are now in a bind. They can either push a narrow law targeting Islam, and have that law be struck down in the courts, or they can broaden the law, and wind up pushing something with spillover effects that will greatly annoy powerful interest groups.

Or, alternatively, they could simply abandon their anti-Islamic crusade altogether, and devote their attention solving problems that actually exist.

Two years ago, President Obama nominated Goodwin Liu (now Justice Goodwin Liu on the California Supreme Court) to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Liu immediately stood out among the president’s nominees — and indeed, from most of the judges currently serving on the federal bench — for his brilliance and impeccable legal credentials. He is a former clerk to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of the top constitutional scholars in the nation, and he enjoyed wide support from all corners of the legal community. Clinton inquisitor Ken Starr called Liu an “extraordinarily qualified nominee” who will serve as a judge “with great distinction.” Torture memo author John Yoo called him a “very well qualified” nominee who will be a “good judge on the bench.”

Senate Republicans immediately started distorting his record, and they eventually filibustered his nomination into oblivion.

About a year later, we saw this same charade play out again. President Obama nominated Caitlin Halligan to serve as a federal appellate judge in DC. Like Liu, Halligan is an absolutely brilliant legal mind and a former Supreme Court law clerk. Unlike Liu, however, she did not have a paper trial because she has never been a law professor and spent her career advocating on behalf of her client’s views rather than expressing her own. Nevertheless, Senate Republicans filibustered her, relying on the thin argument that she is unconfirmable because she once represented a client whose views disagree with those of the NRA.

So when President Obama nominated former Supreme Court law clerk Paul Watford to a federal judgeship last October, ThinkProgress worried that he too would prove too qualified to be confirmed. Sadly, our fears seem justified. Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee cast an entirely party-line vote to advance Watford to the full Senate — an action which, in the past, has proceeded a GOP filibuster. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) was given the unfortunate task of devising a flimsy rationale for opposing the nomination:

I have substantive concerns regarding Mr. Watford’s views on both immigration and the death penalty.

Mr. Watford partnered with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) in two cases to oppose Arizona’s 2010 immigration bill. In the first case, Friendly House, a class-action lawsuit, Mr. Watford served as co-counsel for most of the plaintiffs, including the class action representative, Friendly House. . . .

With regard to the death penalty, Mr. Watford assisted in submitting an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in Baze v. Rees on behalf of a number of groups who opposed Kentucky’s three-drug lethal injection protocol. In its plurality opinion, the Court rejected the arguments raised in the brief. Ultimately, Kentucky’s three drug protocol was upheld 7-2.

So there you go. In a legal career that stretches nearly two decades, Watford worked for two clients that Grassley disagrees with, and this fact evermore disqualifies him for a seat on the federal courts.

It’s impossible to describe how dangerous this standard is. Our system of law depends on all parties having adequate representation to assert their legal claims, and this is doubly true with respect to the kind of disadvantaged clients who stand against conservatives’ preferred legal outcomes. Grassley is sending a clear and unambiguous message to the entire legal profession here — if you want to be a judge some day, don’t even think about working for the poor, for immigrants, for unions or for criminal defendants. Sadly, many bright and ambitious attorneys will hear that message loud and clear, and will remain in corporate law firms representing well-moneyed clients who will be just fine with or without their services.

Ultimately, however, it’s likely that Grassley’s real motivations are slightly different. Like Liu and Halligan before him, Watford is guilty of being the kind of exceptionally talented attorney who could be on the Supreme Court some day — and so the Senate GOP appears poised to block him even if they can’t think of a plausible reason to do so.

Last August, ThinkProgress highlighted a Texas Watch report showing that the Texas Supreme Court “sided with consumers in 27 percent of cases involving an individual against a corporation or government agency — and it reversed jury verdicts in 72 percent of cases.” A new report by that same organization shows that the court’s favoritism towards corporations is now even worse:

Over the course of the decade, we have reviewed 624 consumer cases, carefully categorizing and compiling win-loss rates, with the scope of these consumer cases encompassing instances where individuals, patients, policyholders, and small business owners were pitted against corporate or governmental entities. . . . On average, defendants have won an overwhelming 74% of their cases and plaintiffs have won just 22% of the time over the last decade. Furthermore, since 2005, consumers have lost an astonishing 79% of their cases before the Texas Supreme Court.

The report also notes that a major factor driving this trend is Gov. Rick Perry (R), whose appointees to the court consistently sided with corporations over people. Indeed, the “win rate” for corporate and other defendants skyrocketed shortly after Perry took over as governor:

At town hall event in Northfield, New Hampshire today, GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum reiterated his call for abolishing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and floated the idea of shipping its judges off to Guam.

Santorum said the court is overly liberal and imposing a “reign of terror of California judges” on other Western states, but acknowledged that outright abolition of the court wouldn’t be exactly constitutional, as judges are guaranteed lifetime appointments. So, Santorum suggested, perhaps jokingly, “maybe we can create a court that puts them in Guam or something like that and keep their life appointments” and be safely quarantined. Watch it:

Santorum also channeled Rick Perry a bit, joking he harbors more nefarious intentions for the current Ninth Circuit judges: “I have some ideas that I won’t share publicly.”

When rival GOP candidate Newt Gingrich also proposed abolishing the Ninth Circuit, former George W. Bush Attorneys General Michael Mukasey and Alberto Gonzales called the plan “ridiculous,” “irresponsible,” and “troubling.” Indeed, as ThinkProgress’ Ian Millhiser has explained, abolishing a federal court because the president doesn’t agree with their rulings is a dangerous breakdown of the separation of powers.