Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn has a warning for the White House if it ignores the suggestions of his judicial nominations committee.

"Have they heard of the words 'blue slip' before?" Cornyn asked.

Cornyn and fellow Texas Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison intend to continue to solicit recommendations from a committee of home-state lawyers about who would make good nominees. Cornyn met with White House Counsel Gregory Craig about the matter last month and thought they'd come to some mutual understanding.

Only problem, as the Dallas Morning News has reported, is the White House says it will rely on the advice of the state's Congressional delegation for recommendations about who should be nominated as federal judge, U.S. attorney or U.S. marshal.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler and the New York Times' editorial board have come out in favor of impeaching Jay Bybee for his role in preparing some of the Bush administration's interrogation memos.

But actually removing Bybee from his seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit remains a remote possibility, predict experts who study judicial impeachment.

Only 13 federal judges have been impeached by the House in American history and only seven of them were convicted in the Senate and removed, according to the Federal Judicial Center.

Federal Judge Jay S. Bybee is facing pressure from members of Congress to resign or face possible impeachment for his role in the preparation of one of the interrogation memos released last week.

Bybee, who has been on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit since 2003, signed one of the four memos released last week in his previous capacity of head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.

He also signed another controversial August 2002 memo setting a high bar for what constitutes torture.

"If the White House and Mr. Bybee told the truth at the time of his nomination, he never would have been confirmed," Patrick J. Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Tuesday, according to CNN . "So actually, the honorable and decent thing for him to do now would be to resign. If he's an honorable and decent man, he will."

The Hispanic Bar Association of the District of Columbia is vigorously pushing its favored nominee for one of two vacancies on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

As first reported by Legal Times, the bar association has endorsed Vanessa Ruiz, currently a judge on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

"The organization is certainly behind her and doing all it can to see she gets the nomination," Brigida Benitez, a past president of the bar association and partner at WilmerHale, told CQ.

The Eighth Circuit has the lowest proportion of women judges in the country and a group there has set out to change that.

In 2007, a group of women lawyers and law professors founded the Infinity Project - the number eight on its side - to push for greater gender diversity.

Diana Murphy, 74, tapped by President Clinton in 1994, is the only woman to have ever served on the Eighth Circuit, which encompasses seven midwestern states. There's also only one woman on the First Circuit, but the proportion is worse on the Eighth, which has more judges, says Sally Kenney, a University of Minnesota political scientist and Infinity Project leader.

Former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania told a Republican lawyers group Friday their party should take the filibuster off the table as an option against President Obama's judicial nominations.

"The word filibuster should not come out of the lips of Republican senators," Santorum told a gathering of the Republican National Lawyers Association in Washington. He said "any idea of a filibuster is folly" given the slim chances of success.

"You don't pull out a gun if everybody in the room knows it's not loaded," Santorum said.

When it comes to judicial nominations, President Obama seems intent on starting out slowly and avoiding controversy as much as possible.

His first three nominations to the U.S. Courts of Appeals were for some of the less contentious seats in states - Indiana, Maryland, and New York - where he could count on home state backing.

The one Republican senator in those three states, Richard Lugar of Indiana, was quick to endorse David Hamilton, whom Obama nominated to a Seventh Circuit seat on March 17.

The nominations have come one or two at a time via press release, without any special ceremony.

Rhode Island's two senators announced Monday they have recommended a state superior court judge as their pick for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

O. Rogeriee Thompson would be the first African American judge to serve on the First Circuit, according to the Providence Journal.

Thompson has already been something of a pioneer during her 21 years as a state judge. She was the first African American woman to serve on both Rhode Island's District and Superior Courts.