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April 25, 2005
Frist
Bill Frist on filibustering federal judges today: "Tonight I want to share with you my thoughts about the filibuster of judicial nominees: it is radical; it is dangerous; and it must be overcome."
But in 2000 the Kitty Kevorkian voted against cloture on Judge Richard Paez. Paez made it to the 9th Circuit after a four year wait. 40 of Clinton's nominees never made it out of commitee. What happened to that up or down vote, Dr. Frist. In total, Republicans blocked or attempted to block 167 nominees during the Clinton administration.
What's even funnier is that Frist, Hatch and the rest have been been calling the judicial filibuster unprecedented when there have been a good number of them in our nation's history including a successful one against Abe Fortas, Johnson's nominee for Chief Justice in 1968.
One thing I've noticed in googling this issue that a remarkable number of right-wing websites have the same exact story which call the judicial filibuster "unconstitutional."
The Constitution is quite silent on the filibuster. Art. II, § 2 of the Constitution gives the President the power to nominate with the "advice and consent" of the Senate any judges. "Advice and Consent" isn't defined so according to Art. I, § 5, ¶ 2, the Senate is free to determine the rules of its proceedings.
The first Senate filibuster was sometime between 1825 and 1841. Changing the rule now just to ram through 10 judges, including Janice Rogers Brown who thinks No means Yes and took a crapload of campaign money from Enron and then wrote Enron favorable opinion and Bill Pryor who doesn't believe in the ADA or Violence Against Women act, who have already been rejected once is quite silly when a million other things demand our government's attention.
Posted by Half-Cocked at April 25, 2005 02:39 AM