Senate Republicans claim they have the votes to go "nuclear"
Hardly a new issue (including when I started a draft of this back in April, only to leave it sitting unfinished), but one that's close to becoming a reality, is a move by senate Republicans - irritated that 10 judicial nominees have been blocked from confirmation by Democrats exercising the filibuster provisions (never mind the roughly 208 nominees who ran through largely on party-line votes) - are looking to change the rules and prevent filibusters from being possible in such instances. The link above is to a piece from April 24th, but the situation's essentially unchanged.
If you want to quickly come up to speed on the issue -- and to get a better idea of how well or poorly informed the media has kept you -- you could do far worse than to give a quick read to The Top 10 filibuster falsehoods. It neatly covers the key elements.
As outrageous as the sanctimonious cries by Republican congressmen that the behavior of Democrats in actually using a point of procedure to protect their constituents and the nation from potentially dangerous nominees, knowing that to do otherwise is to attempt to play against a stacked deck, more disturbing are the calls by supposedly "cooler heads" to come up with a compromise.
There is no compromise to be reached on this issue. There is no compromise with tyranny.
It is vital that the filibuster remain as a viable option for our representatives to protect us from short-term swings in congressional power that can lead to the long-term danger of lifetime judicial appointments.
Any rational person looking at the judicial appointment slate during the first and what has passed of the second Bush administration would, if anything, question the extremely high level of permissivity by the minority party in the House and Senate. The filibuster option has been used in only a very small number of these vitally important decisions.
The filibuster must remain in place in the judicial confirmation process for our protection.
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. Please, please -- even if your state's representatives are Republicans (I'm in Pennsylvania, so I have Arlen "Gave in to the Dark Side of the Force" Specter and the prince of darkness himself, Sanctimonious Rick Santorum, to suffer under) -- let them know what you think.
Additionally, you can add your name to a petition, updated versions of which will be delivered to congress every three hours starting Monday morning until the final vote is complete. At the end there is a message block for you to include your thoughts on the issue. There's the potential that representatives looking for insights into the minds of the electorate on this issue will use some of those points in their defense of the judicial filibuster option. Who knows? It isn't as if these are evil men. Your comments might be just the flicker of light to show the way to some of the congresspeople who are wrestling with this issue.
Finally, if anyone truly wants to talk about a "compromise" what about raising the bar on these judicial appointments? Rather than worry that it would take 60 Senate votes to end a filibuster, why not recognize the real problem - that it's too easy for even a narrow majority to bully lifetime judicial appointments into place - and raise the number of votes necessary for an appointment. If they can't raise enough votes to end a filibuster, shouldn't this tell them that a significant number of representatives are finding the nominee to be a bad idea? As with our health, as responsible individuals, it is their duty to note the pains in the body politic and make a diagnosis, not legislate painkillers that may leave us at the mercy of a creeping cancer.
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