Steven Taylor, Poliblogger, summarizes and provides excerpt from a scholarly analysis of delay and obstruction of judicial nominations from the past 20 years. It is very interesting and provides a way to quantify obstruction across different Congresses and presidents. The key finding is that there has been previous obstruction when there was divided government, but, in the past, when the Senate was of the same party as the president, there was little obstruction. The level of obstruction today by the minority is the new element in judicial debates. Go and check out his report.