Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2004 10:52 pm Posts: 1727 Location: Earth Gender: Male
JUDICIARY - Nuclear Gut Check
On Tuesday, Vice President Dick Cheney will come to the Senate floor and – in partnership with Majority Leader Bill Frist – attempt to devastate minority rights in the Senate by abolishing the judicial filibuster. Whether Cheney and Frist are successful will depend on a small band of moderates who will decide if they want to be remembered for enabling a partisan power grab or defending the traditions of the Senate. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) calls the nuclear option "a dangerous approach. It's an irresponsible approach. And it further erodes the constitutional minority rights element of the Senate." Sen. John Warner (R-VA) notes that "the right of unlimited debate has been a hallmark of the Senate since its inception." Susan Collins (R-ME) says she is "concerned about the impact on the Senate of trying to put through a change that does not represent a consensus." Will these senators stick to their principles or cave to pressure from the radical right? We'll find out tomorrow.
THE COLLAPSING CONSTITUTIONAL ARGUMENT: Frist argues that the nuclear option is justified because the judicial filibuster is unconstitutional. (Under normal circumstances, Frist would need 67 votes to change the Senate rules, which he doesn't have.) If judicial filibusters are unconstitutional today, they have always been unconstitutional. Yet, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) – who supports the nuclear option – acknowledged on the Senate floor last week that "those in 2003 had the right to filibuster judges. I had the right during the Clinton administration to filibuster his appointments." If judicial filibusters are unconstitutional today, they are unconstitutional every time they happen. Yet, Frist argued on the Senate floor last week that "the issue is that we have leadership-led partisan filibusters that have obstructed not one nominee but two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten in a routine way." If judicial filibusters are unconstitutional, there would have to be a provision of the U.S. Constitution that guarantees up-or-down votes on judicial nominations. Yet, last week, when Sen. Robert Byrd asked Frist to point him to the language in the Constitution that guarantees such a vote, Frist replied, "the language is not there."
THE CONTINUING CONSTITUTIONAL HYPOCRISY: In a statement released Friday, Frist vowed to detonate the nuclear option "in the event the Senate fails to invoke cloture" on the nomination of Priscilla Owen. Just five years ago, Frist himself voted against invoking cloture regarding the nomination of Judge Richard Paez, the same act Frist now argues is unconstitutional. After the effort to invoke cloture failed, Frist, along with Majority Whip Mitch McConnell (R-KY), voted to indefinitely postpone Paez's nomination – a move Sen. Arlen Specter calls the equivalent of a filibuster. McConnell defended his conduct on CBS's Face the Nation, noting that Paez was now "on the court." But Paez's confirmation occurred in spite of the best efforts of Frist and McConnell to block it.
LUGAR PUTS POLITICS OVER PRINCIPLE: Sen. Dick Lugar (R-IN) made his opposition to the nuclear option plain. Lugar explained, "I'm opposed to trying to eliminate filibusters simply because I think they protect minority rights, whether they're Republicans, Democrats or other people." But for Lugar, his loyalty to Bill Frist seems to trump his loyalty to Constitutional principles. Last week Lugar told the Indianapolis Star, "I'm not going to undercut Bill Frist."
http://www.americanprogressaction.org/s ... H&b=100480 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Who here is for getting rid of the fillibuster and why? I'm for keeping it. One more step away from our Constitution we go...
"So this is how Liberty dies, with a thunderous applause." -Padme
_________________ "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum." -Noam Chomsky
Joined: Wed Oct 27, 2004 5:58 am Posts: 4417 Location: a block from yoko Gender: Female
I just signed MoveOn PAC's emergency petition to stop the "nuclear option" the far right wing's plan to seize absolute power to stack our courts -– and I hope you will sign too.
Starting Monday, the petition will be delivered straight to Congress every three hours until the final vote, and many of our comments will be read aloud on the Senate floor.
This Tuesday, the Senate will vote on Republican Leader Bill Frist's "nuclear option" to break the rules of the Senate and give the Republican Party absolute control over appointing federal judges.
For 200 years the minority's right to filibuster has kept our courts fair, by making sure that federal judges needed to get at least some support from both sides of the aisle before they were given life time appointments.
If Frist eliminates the filibuster, his next step would be to force far right partisan judges onto the powerful U.S. Courts of Appeals. The real targets, however, are the four seats on the Supreme Court likely to become vacant in the next four years.
With that much power on the Supreme Court, the far right could strike down decades of progress on labor rights, environmental protections, reproductive rights, and privacy.
The "nuclear option" will live or die by a final vote, probably on Tuesday, and the vote is still way too close to call. There are at least 6 moderate Republicans still on the fence and only 3 more votes needed to win. If we can get enough of our voices into congress and into the streets in the next 72 hours, we can still save our courts.
Please take a minute to join me and sign the emergency petition today.
Joined: Sun Oct 17, 2004 7:19 pm Posts: 39068 Location: Chapel Hill, NC, USA Gender: Male
Quote:
Who Hates Filibusters? Captain's Quarters, a conservative blog, looks at the Senate's apology for failing to pass anti-lynching legislation decades ago and concludes... that the Senate ought to be apologizing for the filibuster. I agree! The filibuster is a terrible thing, and has long been a terrible thing throughout history. The captain gets his facts a bit muddled (Southern Democrats most certainly did control the Senate, via committee chairmanships that they acquired through seniority), but his larger point is correct. Were it not for the filibuster, this country would have had: anti-lynching laws, faster progress on civil rights, universal health care, stronger labor rights. In other words, it would have been easier, in general, to pass progressive legislation. I'm glad that conservatives are hopping aboard this project, for whatever reason.
Now does that mean the filibuster is inappropriate in all cases? No, not necessarily. I happen to think it's an appropriate measure, on principle, for judicial nominees, though I'll admit I'm not really all that adamant on this point. But it's also true that liberals have found, more often than not throughout history, that they have the votes to pass progressive measures, only to be quelched by a handful of reactionaries in the Senate wielding the filibuster. The most recent case I can think of was a labor bill during the Clinton administration that would have prevented striking workers from being permanently replaced. Blocked by Republicans. (They also ran the clock out on the health care debate in 1993 with the filibuster.) So yes, right now is certainly as good a time as any to use the Senate's shameful history on anti-lynching as an opportunity to examine whether having a sluggish and wholly unrepresentative legislative chamber is the best thing for this country to have, both now and in the future.
_________________ "Though some may think there should be a separation between art/music and politics, it should be reinforced that art can be a form of nonviolent protest." - e.v.
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