This is the Tom Hartman program.

Blue Slips, this is not part of the Senate rules.

This is merely a tradition. There's no obligation to follow this. And here's the here's what it goes back to. This goes back to the days before the the telegraph you know the

telegraph became widespread across the United States in the period from the

1830s and 1840s really until the 1890s it

actually goes back to that era and before and the rationale was if you're a senator from Maryland and you're sitting in

Washington DC and the president nominates somebody to be a judge who is in

Wyoming and they're going to be a judge who is in Wyoming and they're going to be on the whatever circuit

you know Wyoming is part of odds are you being the senator from Maryland

have no idea who that person is.

So if either of the two senators from Wyoming think that, you know, this guy is a fool or a

buffoon or a drunk or whatever and shouldn't be on the court, then what they do is they withhold

a blue slip.

They refuse to basically endorse that person.

And the Senate Judiciary Committee has this tradition of

honoring that and saying okay if you're not going to endorse this person

we're not going to let them go through committee and their nomination will never hit the floor.

Now, Republicans started abusing this back during the Clinton administration, refusing to submit blue slips on judges

that Bill Clinton was nominating.

And the result of that was that Clinton

had to pick more and more and more conservative judges to get people that these

red state senators would actually provide a blue slip for.

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