After 8 years, we finally got our 7th Circuit judge — as the Senate votes in defiance of Tammy Baldwin.

The Wisconsin State Journal reports:

The Senate voted along party lines to confirm Milwaukee attorney Michael Brennan to fill an opening on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The tally was 49-46. The seat has been open for more than eight years, the longest ever for the nation’s appellate courts.

The Senate gives lawmakers a chance to weigh in on a judicial nominee from their home state by submitting a blue-colored form called the “blue slip.” A positive blue slip signals the Senate to move forward with the nomination process. A negative blue slip, or withholding it altogether, signals a senator’s objection and almost always stalls the nomination.

Until this year, it had been nearly three decades since the Senate confirmed a judge without two positive blue slips. Brennan’s confirmation marked the second time it has happened this year. Baldwin declined to return her blue slip.

The news for cats.

1. "They even had a cat together named Max," writes the Daily Mail in "EXCLUSIVE: 'They went back and forth having sex, screaming, yelling, having sex.' Meet the college professor who Barack Obama loved and lost because he 'wasn't black enough to have a white wife,'" where the top-rated comment is: "They 'had a cat together'? Is that even biologically possible?"

2. "Judge Posner Is Beyond Catty" is a column by Ed Whelan at National Review who is incredibly irked at 7th Circuit judge Richard A. Posner for doubting that Neil Gorsuch cried while skiing when he heard that Justice Scalia died. Posner doubts both that the news intercepted Gorsuch on a ski slope and also that the crying could ensue, given that Scalia was 80, a heavy smoker and — in Posner's un-PC words — "known to be obese." Whelan struggled to come up with mean enough words to lob at Posner. After trying "What a jerk," he ended up with Posner's own words: "I have exactly the same personality as my cat…. Cold, furtive, callous, snobbish, selfish, and playful, but with a streak of cruelty." Poor hapless Whelan, trying to make us hate Posner and serving up one of Posner's best witty remarks. Whelan, thinking he's getting the better of Posner, follows that cool joke with a humorless "Yes, indeed. Decent human beings aim higher."

3. Howard Stern has 17 kittens.

4. "In a bizarre case that so far has police and residents stumped, at least seven cats in Waynesboro’s Tree Streets neighborhood have been shaved since December without their owners’ permission, according to Waynesboro Police," reports The News Virginian. The cats were "shaved in the underbelly, groin and leg areas" and "not otherwise harmed."

5. Evidence that cats are nowhere nearly as popular as mainstream media think. Here's a Washington Post article, titled "An artist’s best friend? Cats, a new Smithsonian exhibit claims," full of cute pictures of cats, including one holding an artist's brush and palette and — to make sure you get that the cat is an artist — wearing a beret. The article has been up for over a week, and it has zero comments.

6. That's it for the cat news. There are hundreds of recent cat stories, but they don't make the cut. They don't make the shave. I think, as I said in Item #5, people are not that interested in cats. Remember when cats ruled the internet? Bloggers did Friday Cat Blogging. Hey, wait a minute. Kevin Drum still does Friday Cat Blogging. Here's the most recent one, deploying a cat for the cause of anti-Trumpism. But even cat-anti-Trumpiana is old. Here's "These Cats Look Like Donald Trump/The Internet makes #TrumpYourCat a thing." It's from July 2015.

7. From the comments to this post, after a certain amount of discussion of crying — "What happened to Posner?" (MayBee), "I don't know, but he's 78, and if he dies, there should be no crying" (me), "There's no crying in jurisprudence – or skiing!" (Paco Wové) — campy said: "I cried because I had no cats, until I met a man who had 17."