It takes a calculator and perhaps the rigor of Sherlock Holmes to cut through the partisan rhetoric about President Barack Obama's first-term record on judicial nominations. But the bottom line is clear enough.
There are more vacancies on the federal courts now than when Obama took office nearly four years ago. And he is the first president in generations to fail to put a nominee on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the second most influential court in the land and traditionally a training ground for Supreme Court justices.
Obama has, of course, left his mark on the high court by nominating Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Their confirmations leave those two seats for decades in liberal hands and marked a historic diversification of the court.