Judge Elissa Cadish, a state court judge in Nevada who President Obama nominated to a federal district court, asked the President to withdraw her nomination, according to a letter that became public today. Cadish was the victim of an arcane senate tradition that allowed just one senator, Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV), to unilaterally block her nomination. Heller objected to her nomination because she once correctly described the state of gun rights law prior to the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller.

In 2008, before Heller established for the first time in American history that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms, Cadish was asked whether the Constitution does indeed protect such an individual right, and she gave the only correct answer a judge could have given at that point in history — “I do not believe that there is this constitutional right,” adding “of course, I will enforce the laws as they exist as a judge.” This statement accurately described the state of the law pre-Heller.

Nevertheless, Cadish’s nomination languished without a hearing due to a Senate tradition that allows a single senator to veto a nominee from their home state. In Senate parlance, Heller refused to return his “blue slip” on Cadish, and Senate Judiciary Chair Pat Leahy (D-VT) honored a tradition establishing that a nomination will not receive a hearing unless both home-state senators sign these slips.

It should be noted that not every Senate Judiciary Chair has honored this tradition in the past. In 2003, for example, when Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) took over as Judiciary chair and George W. Bush was president, Hatch largely abandoned the blue slip rule. According to the Congressional Research Service, “[a] return of a negative blue slip by one or both home-state Senators d[id] not prevent the committee from moving forward with the nomination — provided that the Administration [] engaged in pre-nomination consultation with both of the home-state Senators,” during during Hatch’s tenure.

There is no good reason why President Obama’s nominees should not enjoy the same deference that President Bush’s nominees enjoyed under Hatch.

The National Rifle Association’s NRA Political Victory Fund PAC has distributed more than $1 million in career donations to current members of the United States Senate. And, like their House counterparts, the Senators who have received the most are also among the most vocal opponents of any new gun violence prevention legislation advanced in the aftermath of the school shooting at Newton, Connecticut.

A ThinkProgress analysis of data from Political MoneyLine reveals that the top 10 Senate beneficiaries of NRA money are all Republicans. Each has already indicated his opposition to President Obama’s gun violence proposals and each has received an “A” or “A+” rating from the NRA. They are:

SEN. JIM INHOFE (R-OK) — AT LEAST $64,900

Inhofe said last month, “I will continue to strongly oppose any effort to undermine the Second Amendment and an individual citizen’s right to keep and bear arms. … The text of the Constitution clearly confers upon an individual the right to bear arms – and not just for the purposes of hunting as many liberals will claim. Our Founders believed that the people’s right to own guns was an important check on the powers of the government and ‘necessary to the security of a free State.’ I couldn’t agree more and I stand firm in my support of this right.”

SEN. ROY BLUNT (R-MO) — AT LEAST $60,550

Blunt said last month, “Unfortunately, the president’s proposals today fundamentally fail to address ways that we can prevent tragic events like Sandy Hook, and instead, he’s attempting to restrict the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans.” Last week, he expressed doubt that the Senate would even expand background checks.

SEN. SAXBY CHAMBLISS (R-GA) — AT LEAST $56,950

Chambliss said last month, “While I am certain that the president’s proposal is well-intentioned, it is Congress’ responsibility to make sure that Americans’ constitutional rights are protected.”

SEN. JOHN THUNE (R-SD) — AT LEAST $48,605

Thune said last month, “There is a lot of emotion driving this debate. We need to prevent this in the future, and make the schools and our kids safer. And frankly, I don’t think it has to do with restrictions on the Second Amendment.”

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC) — AT LEAST $46,600

Graham said last month, “One bullet in the hands of a homicidal maniac is one too many. But in the case of a young mother defending her children against a home invader — a real-life event which recently occurred near Atlanta — six bullets may not be enough. Criminals aren’t going to follow legislation limiting magazine capacity. However, a limit could put law-abiding citizens at a distinct disadvantage when confronting a criminal. As for reinstating the assault weapons ban, it has already been tried and failed.”

SEN. RICHARD SHELBY (R-AL) — AT LEAST $43,755

Shelby said on his Congressional website, “We all mourn the victims of shocking tragedies that have resulted from senseless acts of violence perpetrated by seriously disturbed individuals. However, such tragedies should not be viewed as an indictment of America’s precious Second Amendment rights. Thus, we should not react in a manner that would unnecessarily and improperly infringe upon the rights of tens of millions of law-abiding American gun owners. Unfortunately, it seems that some zealous gun rights opponents are seeking to leverage tragedies to further their long-held agenda of unduly restricting Americans’ Second Amendment rights.”

SEN. MIKE CRAPO (R-ID) — AT LEAST $43,700

Crapo said last month, “The President’s proposal on gun control is very disappointing. Any discussion about restricting the Constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans deserves, at minimum, a full and public debate in Congress. Burdening law-abiding citizens of this country with additional gun restrictions is not the answer to safeguarding the public from further attacks.”

SEN. ORRIN HATCH (R-UT) — AT LEAST $41,750

Hatch said last month that even passage of universal background checks would be “the way reductions in liberty occur.” He added, “When you start saying people all have to sign up for something, and they have a database where they know exactly who’s who, and where government can persecute people because of the database, that alarms a lot of people in our country, and it flies in the face of liberty,” noting that gun rights are “an express provision in the Constitution, unlike the penumbras and other conjured-up provisions that aren’t there that the court has come up with over the years. This is express, and many people are very, very concerned about any infringement on it, and I’m one of them.”

SEN. CHUCK GRASSLEY (R-IA) — AT LEAST $41,200

Grassley said last month, “The Second Amendment is more than just words on paper. It’s a fundamental right that ensures citizens the ability to protect themselves against the government. Unfortunately, the President seems to think that the Second Amendment can be tossed aside. Using executive action to attempt to poke holes in the Second Amendment is a power grab along the same pattern we’ve seen of contempt for the elected representatives of the American people. Some of these directives clearly run afoul of limitations Congress has placed on federal spending bringing the President’s actions in direct conflict with federal law. More importantly, it’s hard to see how any of these executive actions would have prevented the tragedies that precipitated this effort.”

SEN. ROGER WICKER (R-MS) — AT LEAST $36,750

Wicker said last month, “The President’s proposals would violate the Constitution and have been proven not to be effective in preventing gun violence, I will be part of a bipartisan coalition opposing this legislation and looking for real solutions such as school safety guards, mental health care, and addressing the culture of violence in the media. The Second Amendment rights of Americans must be preserved.”

The 10 have received more than $480,000 combined in career NRA PAC money.

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights subcommittee will hold a hearing Tuesday to examine proposals to reduce gun violence. The four Republicans on the nine-person panel are Graham, Hatch, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX). Cruz (at least $9900) has blasted the President for “trying to exploit the tragic murder of children as an excuse to push his own extreme anti-gun agenda,” and Cornyn ($17,850) has said we must enforce existing gun laws before we consider any new ones.

For most of President Obama’s time in office, Senate Republicans engaged in such an aggressive campaign to hold up his judicial nominees that even their fellow Republican Chief Justice John Roberts urged them to quit it. After three years of roadblocks, however, they’ve now decided to tear up the road:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) made the decision to blockade nominations official Wednesday when he informed his colleagues that he would invoke the “Thurmond Rule” from now until after the elections.

Named after the late Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) — and alternately called the “Leahy Rule” by some Republicans after Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) — the doctrine holds that within six months of a presidential election, the opposition party can, and typically does, refuse to allow votes on circuit court judges.

First of all, there is no doctrine saying that court of appeals judges cannot be confirmed six months before an election. According to data from the Federal Judicial Center, President Carter had 5 appeals judges confirmed between this day in 1980 and that year’s election, one of whom was future Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. President Reagan had 7 in his first term and 2 in his second. The first President Bush had 7. No appellate judges were confirmed in the lead up to the 1996 election, but one was confirmed at the end of President Clinton’s second term. The second President Bush had 3 confirmed during this period in 2004 and 2 in 2008.

In other words, if history is any guide, the supposed ban on late term confirmations does not exist, and it has never existed except arguably during the Clinton presidency, when then-Judiciary Committee Chair Orrin Hatch (R-UT) routinely played Calvinball with the Senate’s rules in order to keep President Clinton’s judges from being confirmed.

Indeed, in 2004, when George W. Bush was in the White House, Senate Republicans had very different things to say about the nature of the Thurmond Rule. In Hatch’s words, “”There is no ‘Thurmond Rule’ . . . . we’re going to keep on pushing ahead on judges and hopefully get a number of them through before the end of the year.”