D.C. Circuit a "high court"?

As I predicted yesterday, the Deseret News and The Salt Lake Tribune had coverage today of the two-day-old news that President Bush appointed BYU general counsel Tom Griffith to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. In the News story, Lee Davidson refers to the D.C. Circuit as "that high court." While the D.C. Circuit (as noted by Davidson) is often considered the second most important federal court in the country, I have never heard it called a "high court," as that term is generally reserved for the U.S. Supreme Court and the various state supreme courts.

Meanwhile, the Trib story, written by Christopher Smith, contains this highly suspect paragraph:

While some Senate Republicans reportedly resisted [Griffith's] nomination in favor of a more hard-line conservative, others have argued that his political philosophy and Senate credentials are moderate enough to avoid another protracted confirmation battle with Democrats in an election year.

A basic constitutional tenet is that the President nominates federal judges and the Senate confirms them. Thus, if senators think Griffith is too moderate, they can air that out now that he has been nominated. Senators have no official role in the nomination process, although it has long been the case that senators bring nominees to the attention of the President. Smith does not tell the reader from whence he got the information about Senate Republicans' "reported" resistance to Griffith. This type of veiled reference is at least ambiguous and potentially misleading.