ConfirmThem

By AndrewHyman Comments () / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said a few words recently about judicial nominations:

"What we need to have is a system where people who come forward are not filibustered based on ideology but voted on based on qualifications," he said. "We have got the hope of going back to the old way of doing business that if you didn't like them, you voted against them, but everybody got a vote….If I'm wrong, and it all breaks down, I am willing, ready and able to break the rules" on filibusters, he said, referring to the so-called nuclear option.

Meanwhile, Pat Buchanan painted an interesting (and accurate) analogy:

The filibuster-veto is the moral equivalent of letting a mob tie a man to a whipping post and lash him almost to death, without a trial, while denying the majority the right to set him free. Under the filibuster-veto, at least a dozen conservative judges have seen their good names smeared by Senate demagogues, as in a show trial, but been denied a vote by the full Senate on the truth or falsity of the charges against them.

Maybe I'm a bit daft, because this sentence in an Associated Press story from the Washington Post makes no sense to me:

So while another of President Bush's judicial nominees, Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen, is likely to be the flashpoint for a showdown over whether Democrats should be able to stop appointments to the nation's highest courts, Brown is being debated just as much on the Senate floor this week.

I thought the Owen business was all finished. Maybe it's like that movie Groundhog Day.