THE DOGS BARK, BUT THE CARAVAN MOVES ON: Democrats flail and fail to stop another well-qualified Trump judicial nominee.

Wednesday, while the media continued to focus on the fallout over the impotency of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., in leading the Democrat’s unnecessary government shutdown, Republican leaders in the Senate concentrated on the courts. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, moved forward with hearings on President Trump’s judicial nominees — including consideration of the president’s nominee to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Michael B. Brennan.

Trump nominated Brennan to fill the Wisconsin seat on the court of appeals in early August, but Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., held up Brennan’s appointment by refusing to signify her acquiescence to the president’s nominee by returning her “blue slip.” But because “blue slips,” as Grassley explained, do not serve as “single-senator vetoes,” Grassley moved forward with the hearing with hopes of finally filling the circuit court seat that has been vacant since January of 2010. . . .

While Brennan’s stellar performance over the course of Wednesday’s two-hour hearing should cement his confirmation, critics had already instituted a preemptive strike on his nomination. Days before the hearing, the inaccurately named far-left organization People for the American Way in a piece headlined, “Moving Forward on Michael Brennan Nomination Would Mark Dangerous Surrender to Trump,” condemned Brennan’s nomination as violating “a longstanding bipartisan arrangement between Brennan’s home-state senators, Ron Johnson and Tammy Baldwin.”

Challenges to Brennan based on the lack of a blue slip from Baldwin aren’t likely to succeed, however, given Grassley’s previous success in moving forward David Stras’ nomination to serve on the Eighth Circuit Court, without the typical two-senator blue slips. At the time, Grassley countered critics’ claims that he was abolishing a 100-year tradition of deferring to home-state senators’ views on judicial nominations, and last week, the Judiciary Committee advanced Stras’ nomination to the full Senate on a 13-8 vote. Stras, a former Minnesota Supreme Court justice, is expected to be confirmed in the coming days.

I’m glad the Senate is moving faster, but why keep the blue-slip rule?