Sen. Frist on why he filibustered a judge

[tristano's ghost]

Um uh...

SEN. SCHUMER: Isn’t it correct that on March 8, 2000, my colleague [Sen. Frist] voted to uphold the filibuster of Judge Richard Paez?

SEN. FRIST:
The president, the um, in response, uh, the Paez nomination - we’ll come back and discuss this further. … Actually I’d like to, and it really brings to what I believe - a point - and it really brings to, oddly, a point, what is the issue. The issue is we have leadership-led partisan filibusters that have, um, obstructed, not one nominee, but two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, in a routine way.

I'll bet he comes back and discusses it later. Gaaah, isn't it a drag when you can't simply reinvent reality as you go? What a jackass... at least he's no longer killing cats--just Senate protocol.

[tristano's ghost]

Josh Marshall on why the filibuster coup is a crock:

As we wait on the sidelines for the seemingly inevitable chain reaction to take place on the senate floor, it is worth observing and considering the fact that every Republican senator certainly knows that the proposition they're about to attest to is quite simply a lie. Perhaps they have so twisted their reasoning as to imagine it is a noble lie. But it's a lie nonetheless.

What do I mean?

Whether you call it the 'nuclear option', the 'constitutional option' or whatever other phrase the GOP word-wizards come up with, what "it" actually is is this: the Republican caucus, along with the President of the Senate, Dick Cheney, will find that filibustering judicial nominations is in fact in violation of the constitution.

(Just to be crystal clear, what the senate is about to do is not changing their rules. They are about to find that their existing rules are unconstitutional, thus getting around the established procedures by which senate rules can be changed.)

Their reasoning will be that the federal constitution requires that the president makes such nominations "by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate" and that that means an up or down vote by the full senate.

Nobody believes that.

Not Dick Cheney, not any member of the Republican Senate caucus.

For that to be true stands not only the simple logic of the constitution, but two hundred years of our constitutional history, on its head. You don't even need to go into the fact that other judicial nominations have been filibustered, or that many others have been prevented from coming to a vote by invocation of various other senate rules, both formal and informal, or that almost countless numbers of presidential nominees of all kinds have simply never made it out of committee. Indeed, the whole senate committee system probably cannot withstand this novel and outlandish interpretation of the constitution, since one of its main functions is to review presidential appointees before passing them on to the full senate.

Quite simply, the senate is empowered by the constitution to enact its own rules.

You can think the filibuster is a terrible idea. And you may think that it should be abolished, as indeed it can be through the rules of the senate. And there are decent arguments to made on that count. But to assert that it is unconstitutional because each judge does not get an up or down vote by the entire senate you have to hold that the United States senate has been in more or less constant violation of the constitution for more than two centuries.

For all the chaos and storm caused by this debate, and all that is likely to follow it, don't forget that the all of this will be done by fifty Republican senators quite knowingly invoking a demonstrably false claim of constitutionality to achieve something they couldn't manage by following the rules.

This is about power; and, to them, the rules quite simply mean nothing.

-- Josh Marshall

[tristano's ghost]

That veritable fount of wisdom and decency aka Rick Santorum on the Senate floor:

"What the Democrats are doing is the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 saying, 'I'm in Paris. How dare you invade me. How dare you bomb my city? It's mine.' This is no more the rule of the senate than it was the rule of the senate before not to filibuster."

Geez... I thought stupid and gratuitious Nazi allusions were supposed to be the left's ballgame. Marshall's right--history, law, logic all out the window with these guys--it's all about power. In fact, Senator Santorum is much closer to what he describes than our ragtag opposition party trying to keep a handful of extremists off the courts.

[tristano's ghost]

One question--do the new conservatives have a memory capacity that extends beyond last week? I know it's goshdarned inconvenient and all, when your job is to reinvent reality every day to suit whatever way you feel like railroading the law... but they really oughta take a look at their press quotes before they open their fool mouths:

"Senator Byrd's inappropriate remarks comparing his Republican colleagues with Nazis are inexcusable," Santorum said in a statement yesterday. "These comments lessen the credibility of the senator and the decorum of the Senate. He should retract his statement and ask for pardon."

I expect that Sen. Santorum's request for pardon will be arriving shortly.

[clinthopson]

The Republican hypocracy is resonant,

[Tom Storer]

Of course it would be unfair and childish to note at this point that the good Senator's name has come to be synonymous with "that frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex."

[hornplayer]

next they'll just suspend the Constitution. I've been waiting for them to do that for nearly five years now....

[Doc Martin]

Originally Posted by hornplayer

next they'll just suspend the Constitution. I've been waiting for them to do that for nearly five years now....

They did it's called "The Patriot Act"

Hahahahahaha...............

[GoodSpeak]

Isn't it interesting how when President Clinton was in office [and there was a Democratic majority in the Senate] the republicans squashed out 70 judicial nominations.

Hm.


Now we see the republican's true colors.

Originally Posted by hornplayer

next they'll just suspend the Constitution. I've been waiting for them to do that for nearly five years now....

No worries.

It's already happened.

The day it was demanded that you must have 60 out of 100 Senators make up a majority.

[crawjo]

Effective politicans are good at negotiating. So the Democrats can filibuster every Bush appointee. That's a good card for them to play. It seems to me that it shouldn't be that difficult for the Republicans to find enough Democrats to break the filibuster by compromising and making concessions. But I guess the Republicans want everything.

[GoodSpeak]

Originally Posted by crawjo

But I guess the Republicans want everything.

You said a mouthful, Crawjo.


What the current republican leadership is doing to us and the Constitution is absolutely frightening.




One step closer to a Bush monarchy.

[Gary Sisco]

Fascism doesn't have ideas or principles.

It's a form of political behavior, and as such, has no need for consciousness of itself on the part of the behaver.

Logic and consistency (and hypocrisy, far's that goes) therefore have no place in it, therefore to critique it based on those things is a meaningless effort.

[Gary Sisco]

It's obvious to me if no one else that facts and the actual historical record have no place at all in American alleged debate, but the current Economist has a chart showing the actual numbers of judges approved during the reigns of the various presidents of modern times.

There has been zero statistical significance between the numbers of judges appointed and approved under Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, or Bush.

None.

Nada.

Another non-issue.