Frankly, we can't determine who's to blame for the Bush administration's failure to nominate candidates to fill any of the three openings in Colorado's seven-judge federal district.

Nor can we comprehend the hold-up. By early April, Sens. Wayne Allard and Ken Salazar had recommended two nominees - University of Colorado counsel Christine Arguello (a Democrat) and former assistant U.S. attorney Gregory Goldberg (a Republican).

Allard had suggested those two nominees among a list of seven he sent to President Bush in January. Salazar signed off on Arguello and Goldberg (along with another candidate not on Allard's list) in April.

The senators have never been able to agree on a third nominee, however. So both their offices told us they've asked the White House to move forward with the two names, just to get the confirmation process moving.

Is the White House waiting until a third, consensus candidate emerges, so that all the vacancies can be filled? If so, why?

At this point, we don't care who's responsible for the delays. They just need to end. Because if senators don't begin the process of meeting and interviewing the candidates in the next couple of weeks, the three positions will surely remain open for more than another year.

If that happens, shame on everyone involved. Colorado's federal courts were struggling to keep up with their caseloads when all seven seats were filled. Now only four judges are carrying full caseloads, and then some. With the semi-retirement of District Court Judges Lewis Babcock and Walker Miller and the death of Judge Phillip Figa, backlogs will grow, delaying justice for all litigants.

We first warned of this potential crunch in January, after U.S. District Court Judge Edward Nottingham, the chief judge in the district, told reporters of his concerns. Nottingham noted that Babcock and Miller informed President Bush and both senators of their decisions to take "senior status" last year, so the need for replacements was hardly a surprise. Figa passed away early this year.

Because the background checks and other investigations of nominees can take several months, Nottingham urged the senators to agree on potential successors quickly.

He was right. During the waning months of an election year, judicial confirmations typically languish. It's difficult to schedule hearings when most senators are campaigning for their own re-elections, working to elect other candidates, or retiring. And Democratic leaders in the Senate have added incentive to go slow on processing nominees this year given the expectation that their party's presidential nominee - almost certainly Barack Obama - will enjoy an advantage in the fall over Republican John McCain. Filling judicial vacancies is also a low priority for a new president, who has to nominate an attorney general and get that candidate confirmed before even thinking about federal judges.

The bottom line: If the confirmation process is not under way by Memorial Day, when Congress begins a series of sporadic recesses that run through the election, all three seats may be unfilled for the rest of 2008 and much of 2009.

To make matters worse, Colorado's federal district judges could barely keep their dockets current before the three positions went vacant. In 2005, the Judicial Conference of the United States concluded that, to maintain an acceptable workload, Colorado should have nine federal district judges, not seven.

Now there's a genuine possibility that four judges will be doing the work of nine for another year.

Under those circumstances, it could take several years for a fully staffed federal district to catch up.

Coloradans deserve better. The White House should send Arguello's and Goldberg's names to the Senate immediately. If all three openings can't be filled with consensus picks before the next president takes office, then get two judges on the bench, and quickly.