posted on November 13, 2003 05:59:08 AM new
And from Fox News' Julie Asher
Even if the public pays little attention, that may not condemn the GOP strategy, said Douglas Koopman, professor of political science at Calvin College (search).
"[/i]I think in the long term, actually, it's really not a bad strategy[/i]. There's no chance for victory in the short term, but the more instances the Republicans can display the Democrats as obstructionists, over time it will erode the Democratic Party electorally," Koopman said, adding that the strategy's success will not be clear until Election Day 2004.
What do the dems fear that they won't allow these nominations to go for a vote? Vote these people up or down....VERY simple. That's the way our system is supposed to work.
One the 168-4 figure. A little misleading imo, because it doesn't give the whole picture. They have only approved approx 54% [or less] of President Bush's circuit judges.
posted on November 14, 2003 04:29:39 AM new
Linda,
Why would you quote Fox [Entertainment] News? A news group who manufactures news for people who watch [and quote] them.
You said: "What do the dems fear that they won't allow these nominations to go for a vote? Vote these people up or down....VERY simple. That's the way our system is supposed to work."
I guess that is the way it works when there is a Republican [Supreme court elected] president in office. When Clinton was president 63 of his federal court nominees were not even given a chance to come up for a vote. Don’t you remember when there was such frustration because they weren’t coming
up for vote? BUT, Fox may not have had much about it. They were to busy manufacturing car accidents.
Overnight a senator stated that one Clinton nominee was stopped by Ashcroft personally and never received the courtesy of a vote.
There should be no room for right wing extremists in our federal court systems. Nor should there be room for left wing extremists. Middle of the road women and men should be elected who can listen to
both sides of the issue before them.
The Republithon has already cost the taxpayers a quarter of a million for the last
39 hours. That amount of money could be better spent. Add it to the millions spent for Ken Lay and his witch hunts!
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washingtonpost.com
The Big Filibluster
The Greatest Deliberative Body Shows What It Does Best: Talk Itself Silly
By Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 14, 2003; Page C01
The great Senate 30-hour anti-filibuster filibuster started at 6 o'clock Wednesday evening, and the much-touted dignity of the Senate reigned supreme until, oh, about 6:10, when Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) held up a sign that revealed his plans for the night:
"I'll Be Home Watching The Bachelor."
Perhaps Harkin's choice made sense on a purely artistic level -- "The Bachelor" has the virtue of brevity -- but it meant that Harkin missed one of the strangest nights in Senate history, plus some nifty souvenirs: filibuster buttons, a filibuster children's book, two rival filibuster T-shirts and a filibuster bingo game.
To laymen, the anti-filibuster filibuster might have seemed a bit silly. But to the cognoscenti, who understand the mysterious ways of the United States Senate, it seemed downright bizarre. It was, after all, a filibuster designed to protest the possibility of a filibuster. Or, as its strongest proponent, Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), dubbed it: a "reverse filibuster."
The filibuster is, of course, a time-honored Senate tradition -- an attempt by a minority to stop Senate action by delaying it, frequently by yakking on and on. But this "reverse filibuster" was different. It was, in effect, a publicity stunt designed by the majority (the Republicans) to pressure the minority (the Democrats) to give up its threat to filibuster against four of President Bush's nominees for judgeships.
"We are launching an historic justice-for-justice marathon," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), touting the Republican plan for a 30-hour debate on the judge issue, from Wednesday night through midnight on Thursday.
"This is a travesty," said Minority Whip Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
Reid was so angry at what he considered a Republican waste of time that he responded by launching a time-wasting filibuster of his own last Monday, talking for more than eight hours -- a speech that included goulash recipes, advice on how to keep rabbits out of a garden, and a dramatic reading of six chapters of "Searchlight: The Camp That Didn't Fail," his 1998 book about his Nevada home town.
Undaunted by Reid's filibuster to protest the anti-filibuster filibuster, the Republicans marched to the Senate floor en masse promptly at 6 on Wednesday night to start their talkathon. They were greeted by a gaggle of scornful Democrats, including Harkin, who was armed with his "Bachelor" sign.
And the long, weird show began.
6:30 -- Faced with filling 30 hours of debate -- 15 hours allotted for each party -- Frist and Reid argue over who will get to go next and for how long. Reid wants the next half-hour for the Democrats, but Frist wants Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) to go first. After several minutes of semi-heated debate, Hatch comes up with a solution: "I'll take four minutes now and then I'll take 11 minutes after you get a half-hour."
6:35 -- "We should be voting on the nominations, not debating," says Hatch, whose laryngitis-plagued voice is so raspy that he sounds like Tom Waits. The Democrats, he adds, have treated Bush's four blocked nominees "like dirt."
6:45 -- Promising that "one sign will equal 30 hours of gibberish," Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) displays a garish purple-and-yellow sign that says "168 to 4." "The bottom line is very simple," he says. "We have supported 168 judges that President Bush has sent us. We have blocked four. All this talk of angels on the head of a pin can't equal that."
7:05 -- Downstairs, in the Mansfield Room, the Democrats are holding a pep rally for supporters, some of whom wear T-shirts that read: "We Confirmed 98% of Bush's Judges And All We Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt." Pumping his pasty fist into the air, Ted Kennedy bellows, "We are not going to be a rubber stamp for right-wing ideological judges."
Democrats hand out a "Fili-Bingo" board game and a mock children's book called "Republican Senators and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Night." There's also a box billed as a "Care Package for Courageous Senators." Its contents include coffee, candy bars, a copy of the Constitution and Pepto-Bismol tablets that are said to counteract the nausea induced by Republican rhetoric.
7:45 -- On the Senate floor, Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) denounces this marathon as a "Let's all get together and hold our breath and turn blue for 30 hours" session.
9:08 -- Hatch argues that the Democrats' opposition to Bush nominees "all comes down to abortion." His voice is getting raspier. Now he sounds like Captain Beefheart. He says the Democrats are "treating the president like dirt."
9:40 -- In Frist's office, just off the Senate floor, two cots are set up, one covered with blue sheets, the other with a green sleeping bag. Nobody is sleeping in either one yet. On a table are bowls of fruit, candy, chips and white cheddar popcorn. Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and Andrew Jackson gaze down from paintings on the walls.
10:05 -- Santorum has responded to Schumer's purple and yellow "168 to 4" sign with a purple and yellow sign of his own. It reads: "2,372-0." The 2,372 represents the number of judicial nominees sent to the Senate in U.S. history, he says. The zero represents the number of filibusters of judicial nominees before George W. Bush took office.
"Look at the precedent!" he hollers.
"NO FILIBUSTERS!" he hollers louder.
All pumped up, Santorum predicts that the dastardly Dems won't stop with these four nominees.
"The 168 to 4 will be 168 to 6! And 168 to 7! And 168 to 8!" he yells. "There's no end to this complete debasement!"
10:20 -- "A militant minority is thwarting the will of the majority," says Hatch. His voice is getting even raspier. Now he sounds like Howlin' Wolf.
10:50 -- "This is just a repetition of arguments we've heard over and over and over," says Schumer. As if to prove his point, he refers again to his "168 to 4" sign. "This chart is worth 30 hours of palaver, of gibberish."
11:45 -- "Here we are," says Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). "It's quarter of 12 at night and I feel all perky." The Republicans just aren't perky enough, she suggests. "You get 168 and you don't get four," she says, "and you're whining and you're crying."
She points to a sign reading, "2.6 million manufacturing jobs lost," and she asks the Senate to give unanimous consent to a bill that would raise the minimum wage. A Republican immediately objects, killing the motion.
"That just proves the point," Boxer says. "They just want to complain about four people who already have jobs. They don't want to talk about people who are unemployed."
12:05 -- Schumer has responded to Santorum's "2,372-0" sign with a blowup of a New York Times front page from the 1960s that refers to the bipartisan "filibuster" of the judicial nomination of Abe Fortas. That proves, Schumer says, that the zero in Santorum's sign is baloney. He says the Republicans killed dozens of Bill Clinton's judicial nominations in committee with no hearing and no floor vote.
"The senator from New York," counters Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), "could make soup out of slop."
Sessions proceeds to read quotes by Sens. Boxer, Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) -- all of them denouncing Republicans for filibustering against Clinton nominees. "And now Senator Leahy is leading this filibuster and so is Senator Daschle."
12:45 -- Up in the press gallery, somebody has put a six-pack of beer on ice, creating a quandary for those reporters who are still awake: If they drink a beer, they could doze off and miss some of this scintillating debate. If they don't drink a beer, they have to watch the debate stone-cold sober.
1:30 -- The Mansfield Room is packed again, this time with Republicans, many of them high school and college students wearing blue T-shirts that read: "Justice for Judges Marathon."
"You can tell your grandkids about this," says Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who has just come in off the Senate floor, where he orated for half an hour. "You're here tonight at 1:30 in the morning, and you're witnessing history."
Some of the students aren't quite clear exactly what they're witnessing. "It's been amazing to be inside and see everybody," says Kelly Flynn, 19, a Catholic University student. "But I don't know very much about what they're talking about."
3:00 -- Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), the Democrat with the least seniority, has drawn the graveyard shift of this marathon -- he's assigned to take the floor from 2 to 4 in the morning. Now he's run out of rhetoric and announces that he's going to read from "Master of the Senate," Volume 3 of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson. "It's 1,040 pages," he says. "I assure you, I'm not going to read all thousand pages."
He starts at the beginning, with Caro's long, lyrical description of the Senate chamber -- the very room he's standing in as he reads.
"Daniel Webster's hands," he reads, "rested on one of those desks."
3:45 -- In the Mansfield Room, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council says: "We signed up to keep watch while most of America sleeps." Perkins is one of dozens of folks from conservative religious groups who are packing the Mansfield Room. He denounces "an out-of-control judiciary that's chipping away at our religious liberties."
When Santorum, a Catholic, comes out to address the group, somebody asks him how some senators who profess to be religious can be on the other side on this issue. "There are those who are orthodox and those who are not," he says. "There are those within these faiths who believe in a transcendent God and those who don't."
5:45 -- "The sun's rising on the East Coast," says George Allen (R-Va.). "Country singer Charley Pride urged us to 'kiss an angel good morning.' I don't see any angels around here. My angel's at home, getting the kids up."
6:51 -- Schumer is back on the floor with his "168 to 4" sign. "We can do all the arguments you want," he says. "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"
7:20 -- Outside, the sun is fighting through heavy gray clouds, illuminating the magnificent dome of the Capitol.
Police in heavy coats are standing guard. One of them has been watching the debates on and off through the long night.
"I could see if it was something important like the budget or Iraq," the cop says, "but who cares about judicial appointments?"
This marathon has been going on for more than 13 hours now. There's still nearly 17 hours to go, and some Republicans are talking about continuing past midnight.
posted on November 14, 2003 05:49:30 AM new
Fox News manufactures news??? LOL Sure they do. This is not only being reported by Fox, but also on CNN and MSNBC. It's on the front page of many newspapers and has been discussed on almost every talk radio show. But since Fox News is also reporting it, it can't be believed. That's crazy.
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As far as wasting time goes, this wouldn't be happening if the dems would allow the votes to take place. Up or down...but no, the dems don't want a vote...that's too democratic for them. They're entering another phase of their continued obstructionism.
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And as far as clinton's nominations I believe all but ONE was finally voted on and won their seats. He did end up seating some in a round-about-way...not requiring an up or down vote, and when their terms were up, the vote was to seat them. Maybe the republicans just might do it the same way. Time will tell.
You make assumptions that I ONLY believe the seats should be allowed to go up for a vote when the republicans are in office. And, assumptions are usually wrong, as they are in your case. I've always felt they all should be put to a vote.....not waste the time with this fighting.
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The Senate Democrats' judicial obstruction deserves this attention. So far the Democrats have filibustered four of President Bush's judicial nominees: District Judge Charles Pickering of Mississippi, Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen, Alabama Attorney General William Pryor, and Miguel Estrada, who withdrew his nomination after waiting for a vote for two years. Democrat senators' holds and promised filibusters block another dozen or so nominees. This state of affairs is unprecedented: never before has the Senate denied a judicial nominee a simple up-or-down vote with a filibuster. (No, Abe Fortas's 1968 nomination to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court doesn't count; President Johnson, sensing that Fortas would lose an eventual vote to bipartisan opposition, withdrew Fortas's nomination after four months and one lost cloture vote.)
It is not clear that the Democrats' filibuster strategy is even constitutional. It takes sixty votes, which the Republicans don't have, to break a filibuster. The Constitution—Article II, Section 2—stipulates that president shall nominate judges with the "Advice and Consent" of the Senate. [b]When the Constitution requires supermajority approval—such as when making treaties, mentioned in the same section—the Constitution says so. The Framers attached no such requirement to judicial nominations in the Constitution. As even Democrat Senator Zell Miller said around 2 AM this morning, a supermajority requirement is "simply not there." Nomination decisions should be by majority: 51 votes.
As ever, "Justice delayed is justice denied," The Democrats block judicial nominees to every circuit court in "judicial emergency"—that is, those benches so understaffed that citizens suffer delays of months or years in seeking justice.
Just as troubling, the filibusters throw the future of the nomination process into uncertainty. Given the scrutiny applied, for example, to Kuhl—who has been vilified by Senate Democrats as racist and "extremist" and "hostile to women" (these latter two quotes from Sen. Barbara Boxer) for a memorandum to which she contributed as a junior staffer in the Office of the Solicitor General—who in the future will willingly submit to such indecencies and harassment? And will the special interest groups that are driving the filibusters—like People for the American Way and the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League—become emboldened with their success and push for more? There are special interests on both sides of the aisle; if any group able to line up forty senators can block a judicial appointment, the result will be complete deadlock in the nomination process.
Give Frist that he's creative: staging a marathon executive session was not an obvious solution to the filibuster problem because, directly, it won't accomplish anything. No Democrat is going to change his or her vote. Frist's genius was to discard that goal and fight a larger battle. These thirty hours—or at least the twelve that have passed so far—are theater, but a "theater of truth," as Sen. Arlen Spector put it early on.
This drama is put on for the sake of three audiences: conservative activists, the public, and the Republican senators.
The filibuster issue has a momentum that until yesterday would have been unimaginable.
While polls show that the public strongly supports simple up-or-down votes for judicial nominees, few outside of Washington are aware of the extent and uniqueness of the Democrats' current obstructionism. If the current coverage is any indication of the way this will play throughout the day and tomorrow, a lot of Americans could have a changed opinion of the Senate Democrats by the weekend.
posted on November 14, 2003 07:08:02 AM new
To answer the statement that this has happened before, the following explains how this is different that what the dems are claiming also happened under the clinton administration:
SEN. KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, R-TEXAS: I certainly do. I think what's happening here is we're amending the Constitution without going through the process.
I think the Constitution is very clear. It's a 51-vote requirement. And it's part of the delicate balance between the president, the executive branch and the Congress. And the president has the right to appoint, and the Congress has the right with 51 votes to say yes to an appointment, or if 51 votes are not gotten it's no.
And we've never seen a partisan filibuster like this. And there are now six people -- six people on the circuit court who are in the process of being filibustered.
HANNITY: But Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison...
HUTCHISON: That's too many, Sean.
HANNITY: I understand it's also the first time in history that this has ever happened to this court, correct?
HUTCHISON: Absolutely. These are circuit court nominees.
President Bush has had only 53 percent of his circuit court nominees confirmed in the first two years of his term. The previous three presidents had 91 percent. You know, the circuit court is in a different league from the district courts, because it is the next step before the Supreme Court.
[This was an interview with both Hutchinson and Reid on Fox News].
posted on November 15, 2003 04:40:15 AM new
Linda: posted on November 14, 2003 05:49:30 AM: "Fox News manufactures news??? LOL Sure they do. This is not only being reported by Fox, but also on CNN and MSNBC. It's on the front page of many newspapers and has been discussed on almost every talk radio show. But since Fox News is also reporting it, it can't be believed. That's crazy."
Linda, I DID NOT say Fox News was manufacturing this Republican Made-From-TV
news event!!!! You spun that in your little brain. Guess you have been watching Fox Crap TV too long!
I ask why anyone [you] would quote a news organization that manufactures news like car accidents. Read, please. Do a Google search it is probably still there. They also change news as needed, like the Jane Akers story. Don't like the results of your reporters? Pear their story down to what the multi-nationals will tolerate. When the reporters will no longer allow any more cuts, Fox fires them. Fox lost in court.
You are missing something here. Many Clintons nominee NEVER made it FOR any vote.
NEVER!!! Rodham-Clinton gave the WHOLE list of nominees who NEVER made it FOR a vote.
Did Fox report that?
Did you listen to both the Democrats AND the Republicans? Or was your mind turned off to
half the arguments?
Santorium made a fool of himself yesterday. His Made-for-TV raves with threats and blackmail was ridiculous.
Hatch's remarks were even dumber. He ranted that women always wanted more spaces in government and now that they are up for vote,
they are rejected. Could that possibly be why
Mr. Bush and friends brought right wingers to the courts?
Forty hours of staged talking? Bringing cots in that no one slept on? Daschel said he didn't know why the cots were there because each Senator had a sofa in their office. We all paid for those cots and for the people who brought them. Guess it went over 1/4 of a million because they ran longer. Overtime for police and other workers, paid for with our money.
Hope everyone will listen to some of the debate on the internet.
