Near the very end of President George W. Bush's second term in January 2009, economist Veronique de Rugy challenged the assertion by then-President-elect Barack Obama that the two-term Republican had "take[n] a hands-off approach to regulation." De Rugy lamented that the Bush administration, in fact, took a relatively heavy-handed approach to regulation.

Perhaps the cocktails preceding yesterday's welcome dinner at the American Constitution Society's annual convention are to blame, but when Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren addressed the dinner, they appeared to be suffering from memory problems. As they spoke about the Senate's handling of President Obama's judicial nominees and Donald Trump's remarks concerning a Mexican-American judge, their memory lapses were too numerous to discuss in a single post. But here are several examples:

Last month, the Senate voted 56-41 to rescind the Department of Labor’s “Fiduciary Rule” using the Congressional Review Act. This was after a House vote of 234-183 to repeal the regulation. Under the Congressional Review Act, the House and the Senate reserve the right to jointly overrule unnecessary or burdensome acts of regulatory overreach. Today, as promised, President Obama has blocked Congress' efforts to deregulate. This is the 10th veto of the Obama presidency.

In the White House’s Rose Garden on Wednesday, President Barack Obama named his nominee to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court. The nominee does not matter in this debate. Really, the process is the issue. The Senate's role is not what the White House and those friendly to this president are making it out to be.