Found this on Obama's appellate judge appointments

While I was on vacation I mostly avoided newspapers and totally avoided tv, but the landlady at a B&B we stayed in had the NY Times out on her table and I found this great article. I don't know if it's been cited here already, but please use freely, because it is great news and explains a lot about the wave of new decisions favorable to issues like gay marriage. It's long and I can't quote the whole thing here, but so worth the read.

Once again, the man just keeps putting in a day's work for every day he holds this office.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/us/politics/building-legacy-obama-reshapes-appellate-bench.html?_r=0

Building Legacy, Obama Reshapes Appellate Bench
By JEREMY W. PETERSSEPT. 13, 2014

WASHINGTON — Democrats have reversed the partisan imbalance on the federal appeals courts that long favored conservatives, a little-noticed shift with far-reaching consequences for the law and President Obama’s legacy.
For the first time in more than a decade, judges appointed by Democratic presidents considerably outnumber judges appointed by Republican presidents. The Democrats’ advantage has only grown since late last year when they stripped Republicans of their ability to filibuster the president’s nominees.
Democratic appointees who hear cases full time now hold a majority of seats on nine of the 13 United States Courts of Appeals. When Mr. Obama took office, only one of those courts had more full-time judges nominated by a Democrat.
The shift, one of the most significant but unheralded accomplishments of the Obama era, is likely to have ramifications for how the courts decide the legality of some of the president’s most controversial actions on health care, immigration and clean air. Since today’s Congress has been a graveyard for legislative accomplishment, these judicial confirmations are likely to be among its most enduring acts.

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With so many of the administration’s policies facing legal challenges, the increased likelihood that those cases could end up before more ideologically sympathetic judges is a reassuring development to the White House. Nowhere has this dynamic been more evident than at the District of Columbia court, which is considered the second most important appeals court in the nation, after the Supreme Court.
>snip< Today it has four Republican appointees and seven Democratic appointees, four of whom Mr. Obama picked.
With control of the Senate at stake in November’s midterm elections, the success of Democrats in reshaping the courts is a reminder of the subtle power that the majority party has even in a moribund Congress. Republicans, who have watched with growing alarm as the Obama nominees passed through the Senate, have begun raising the issue as they try to win six seats they need to take the majority.

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Though the Obama administration was well on its way to leaving a lasting liberal legacy on the federal bench before Senate Democrats curbed the filibuster’s power, the rules change sped up the confirmation process. Today, the number of circuit judges appointed by Republican presidents is 77, compared with 95 by Democratic presidents, according to statistics kept by Russell R. Wheeler of the Brookings Institution.
At the beginning of Mr. Obama’s first term, the picture was reversed: 99 appointed by Republicans and 65 by Democrats. Of course, a president’s political affiliation ultimately has no bearing on how a judge decides cases. History is full of examples when partisans were disappointed by a judge who turned out not to be the loyal ally they expected, like David H. Souter, the liberal-leaning former Supreme Court justice nominated by the first President George Bush. The Supreme Court remains the only court that Republicans can still try to shape through using the filibuster. When Democrats changed the Senate rules to lower the threshold for most confirmations, they left one exception: The minority party still can require a 60-vote majority to confirm a justice.

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And early in his first term, the president purposely stayed away from nominating people who could be pilloried in the confirmation process as overly ideological and further strain partisan tensions in the Senate.
But as Senate Republicans started routinely using the filibuster to thwart Obama nominees as part of their broader strategy to stymie the president’s agenda, the White House and Senate Democrats shifted tactics. The result was not just to strong-arm nominations through the filibuster rules change that infuriated Republicans, but also to make sure left-leaning judges, some of them young and who could serve for decades, were nominated.
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“Everybody understands how important the Supreme Court is. They don’t always understand how important the lower courts are.”
Major pieces of Mr. Obama’s agenda are all but certain to face legal tests in the months and years to come.
Among the most important to the administration are proposed climate change regulations to cut pollution from power plants, a matter that could end up before the District of Columbia court. A dozen states have already filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency seeking to block some of the new proposals.
House Republicans have also filed a lawsuit contending that the president exceeded the limits of his authority when he delayed putting into place certain parts of the Affordable Care Act. That case, too, could end up at the District of Columbia court.

The imprint of the Obama judges is already being felt. In July, when the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit issued an opinion declaring Virginia’s same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional, the author was an Obama appointee, Henry F. Floyd. That court now has 10 full-time judges appointed by Democratic presidents and five who are Republican appointees. When Mr. Obama took office, the court had a majority of Republican appointees.