Still no nominee for Judge Rendell’s seat, but in the past week President Obama has named four circuit court nominees (two 7th Circuit, one 8th, and one 11th).

Conservative commentators are calling for Republicans in the Senate to block any federal appellate nominations until the next presidency. The title of this post is from Paul Mirengoff’s post at the influential conservative legal blog PowerLine, in which he begins:

In his final year in office, President Obama remains in a position to continue his project of transforming America. He can do so through Executive Orders, for example.

Republicans, though, are in a position to close the book on one front — the transformation of the federal judiciary. In November 2014, the GOP took control of the Senate. Consequently, no federal judge can be confirmed without Republican complicity. Indeed, as a practical matter, no federal judge can be confirmed unless Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley allows it.

Until now, unfortunately, Grassley’s inclination has been to pat himself on back for confirming liberal nominees to important courts. I wrote about this here, in connection with the confirmation of Luis Felipe Restrepo, an aggressive left-winger, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

It’s time for Grassley to stop surrendering.

Mirengoff closes by urging his readers to call Senator Grassley’s office to urge him to block Obama’s new appellate nominees.

Mirengoff links to a post by Ed Whelan at National Review which says, “If Senate Republicans are not to indulge in a game of unilateral surrender, these nominations ought to be dead on arrival.” Whelan argues that Democrats only confirmed two appellate nominees in 2008 and both were the product of bipartisan compromise, but “there is no evidence that suggests that Obama or Senate Democrats negotiated in advance with Senate Republicans over any of the recent nominees.” (He’s not talking about Restrepo, whose nomination clearly was negotiated with Republicans.)

I posted earlier that I’m skeptical that any nominee for Judge Rendell’s seat will be confirmed in 2016, and commentary like this does nothing to diminish my skepticism.