ConfirmThem

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

Senator Frist made this remark earlier today:

"We have six or seven options," Frist told a small group of reporters Friday. "Everybody assumes that the constitutional option is the only way to go. It is not."

After this whole "nuclear" thing is over and done, I guess we'll find out what all of those six or seven options were.

Anyway, here's what Norman Ornstein wrote about this subject back in 2003 regarding one particular option:

If a presiding office declared Rule XXII unconstitutional because it did not allow a majority of the Senate to come to a vote on nominations (or anything else), there would still be no provision in Senate rules to force an end to debate and a vote. Here is the relevant provision in Rule XIX on Senate debate: "No Senator shall interrupt another Senator in debate without his consent, and to obtain such consent he shall first address the Presiding Officer, and no Senator shall speak more than twice upon any one question in debate on the same legislative day without leave of the Senate, which shall be determined without debate."

The thing about Rule XIX is that it does not forbid the President of the Senate (who is not a Senator) from interrupting. In other words, a simple majority of the Senate can authorize the VP to interrupt, without changing or invalidating the standing rules of the Senate one bit.

There may also be other methods of forcing an end to judicial filibusters, without changing the standing rules (e.g. enforce the "two-speech rule" and ban dilatory quorum calls). But, Democrats might someday use the same exact methods to get rid of the legislative filibuster. Then, you might say that the GOP would be hanged on the gallows that the GOP itself built, to use a biblical analogy. So, here's a solution: after the judicial filibusters are ended, the GOP should go ahead and use the same technique to end legislative filibusters, UNLESS the Democrats agree to a new standing rule that more fully protects the legislative filibuster.