Curious about the composition of the federal judiciary

A guest post here at the ACSBlog by Leesa Klepper, former Senate Judiciary Committee Counsel to Senator Patrick Leahy, has me thinking about the make-up of the current federal judiciary that now wields new sentencing power in the wake of Booker.  The Klepper post is focused on the composition of the federal appellate courts (and she asserts that “more than three-quarters of the federal appellate courts in our country are dominated by Republican appointees”).  But I am even more interested in a break-down of federal district court judges by appointing presidents, since district judges clearly have the most new sentencing power as a result of Booker.

My hunch is that, despite the presence of many Clinton appointees on the federal district courts, the majority — perhaps the vast majority — of district judges who regularly do sentencings are appointees of either President Reagan or of one of the Presidents Bush.  If that hunch is accurate — and I highly encourage readers in the know to share any data they may have — the distrust of judges expressed by Republicans in Congress (such as Representative James Sensenbrenner and Tom Feeney) is especially curious.  You would think that Republicans would general trust the exercise of sentencing discretion by a judiciary comprised of judges appointed mostly by their own party.