Senator Feinstein is ill and unable to go to the Senate to vote. This is blocking many judicial appointments. She agreed to let another Democrat replace her on the judiciary committee, so as to unblock these votes, but Republicans' assent was required and some refused.

It is absurd for Senator Durbin to defend a questionable bipartisan tradition of the past that the Republicans refused to observe when the saboteur in chief was president. To defend it unilaterally is being a sucker.