Over to you. Final words:

* FEDERAL JUDGESHIPS MOVING AGAIN: The Senate Judiciary Committee again has a batch of Obama judicial nominees to consider for confirmation by the Senate. They include — again — Circuit Judge Jay Moody of Little Rock for a vacancy in Little Rock and Timothy Brooks of Fayetteville for a western district judgeship. They’d cleared committee last year, but the process had to start over when a Republican roadblock stopped the confirmations before adjournment of the last session of Congress. No word on how quickly these two might be confirmed, though both are considered non-controversial. There’s local interest because Moody otherwise will have to file for re-election in March, leaving only one vacant judgeship to contest rather than two for a couple of Little Rock judicial candidates who’ve long announced their candidacies — Cathi Compton and Mike Reif.

Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor, thinks the non-controversial nominees could get final action in February or March, but he indicates the Republican unhappiness that led to the earlier blockade has not been resolved. CORRECTION: I wrote originally that these nominations, rather than simply being resubmitted by the president, had already cleared the Senate committee.

* RADICALS ON THE MARCH: Talk about radicals. Republican John Cooper, the Teabagging Senate candidate in the special election Jan. 14 to succeed Paul Bookout, has some nerve. He and an attack Republican mailer are calling an energetic group of Young Democrats campaigning for Democrat Steve Rockwell a bunch of dirty radicals. A radical being someone who votes for a Democratic presidential candidate. And someone who isn’t endorsed, as Cooper is, by the slavery-revering wackjob former Republican legislator from Jonesboro, Jon Hubbard. Democratic Party Chair Vince Insalaco comments in a fund-raising e-mail: 

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The mail piece is completely false and full of out right lies, but then to target these young folks is simply deplorable. Is this what we have to look forward to from the Arkansas Republican Party this year? Will the Arkansas Republican leadership decry this kind of tactic?

Answer: Are you kidding? But those radical YDs take a more positive tone below.

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