ConfirmThem

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

Again, as you might expect, there’s a huge amount of news and commentary today regarding the filibuster situation. So, I’ll just mention a few of the items that strike me as most significant.

The Washington Post has this report regarding whether or not Senate leaders will ask for party-line voting on filibuster matters this week:

Eric Ueland, his chief of staff, said the leader "has not made this a test of party loyalty," nor has he offered legislative or campaign favors to keep wavering Republicans in line. "There are times and places where those tools might be appropriate," Ueland said. "But on an issue that so directly goes to the core responsibilities of the United States Senate, none of those tools are appropriately applicable."....

Warner, Collins and Specter said they have not been threatened, and Ueland said of the idea, "Not only has it not happened, it's a completely silly idea hatched by the same conspiracists" who believe in UFOs.

Strangely, this story in the Post does not discuss whether or not the Democratic leaders will likewise release members from party-line voting. As Senator Specter has pointed out in his May 20 speech on the Senate floor:

Senator Reid did not make any reference to my urging him to have the Democrats reject the party-line straitjacket voting on filibustering.

It would indeed be unfortuanate if Senator Reid insists upon party-line voting on cloture, while Senator Frist does not. Whatever happens, people like Michael Ackley will hopefully continue to find humor in it:

Last week provided us the highly diverting spectacle of members of "the greatest deliberative body in the world" lying about judicial nominees and the filibuster. These lies included sins of commission and sins of omission, bald misstatements of fact, quotes egregiously out of context, and calculated misinterpretations. It was a veritable carnival of mendacity, made all the more entertaining by the participants' sober demeanor.

Seriously, Ackley goes on to argue for real 24/7 filibusters. Turning now to the Washington Times, that newspaper reports as follows about what some Senators have been saying over the weekend:

"I just think that it is not that big of a deal for senators to exercise their constitutional responsibility," Mr. Allen said on ABC's "This Week." "I think that we'll get the constitutional option done, and we'll vote on judges."

Also yesterday, Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, answered "yes" when asked on CBS' "Face the Nation" whether his party "has the votes to overturn this Senate rule."
....
"We're talking about changing the rules of the Senate with 51 votes, which has never happened in the history of the United States Senate," Mr. McCain said.

Actually, Senator McCain is mistaken, according to MSNBC, which reports that a 51-42 rule change vote occurred on Feb. 20, 1975. There is a long tradition of such votes. No historian disputes that the Senate's very first rules were adopted by simple majority vote, and for many years those rules explicitly prevented rule-changes from being filibustered (i.e. any Senator could make a motion for the "previous question"). Senator McCain is just mistaken.

Michael Barone notes the following:

[O]nly 14 years ago, when the nomination of Clarence Thomas was before the Senate, no Democratic senator gave serious consideration to a filibuster, though there were enough senators opposed to Thomas to uphold one. Evidently, every senator then considered a filibuster unthinkable. Today, the unthinkable is a time-honored tradition.

Robert Novak reports that Senate Democrats are actually pleading with the GOP to "TRUST" the Dems not to abuse the filibuster:

Sen. Mark Pryor, a first-term moderate Democrat from Arkansas, has led these informal negotiations. I asked him how to get by the Supreme Court stumbling block. "Trust," he replied. "We have to try to learn to trust each other." But would Republicans trust Democrats not to filibuster George W. Bush's Supreme Court nominees without a written guarantee? Not to filibuster Antonin Scalia for chief justice? Not to filibuster Miguel Estrada for associate justice?

The Detroit Free Press has an article about one of the nominees, Judge Henry Saad. The article discusses, among other things, Senator Reid's vague statement about Saad's FBI file, and quotes Sean Rushton about that incident:

It is McCarthyite to wave around a piece of paper ... that no one else can see ... and insinuate that it contains damaging information.

And, the LA Times has the latest on compromise negotiations:

The group is discussing a draft agreement under which Democrats would pledge not to use the filibuster in the future except under "extraordinary circumstances." In return, Republicans would pledge not to vote in favor of changing the filibuster rule, unless at some point they thought the Democrats had violated the spirit of the agreement.

Under the draft plan, five of seven Bush nominees to the federal appellate courts would be given up-or-down confirmation votes....

Graham predicted that of the judges in dispute, "at least one would be rejected" by a bipartisan majority [on the floor]. He declined to name that nominee.

So, the compromisers still feel like they want to deprive the Senate the opportunity to vote up or down on at least one majority-supported nominee. That would be a horrible precedent, and is exactly the precedent that the GOP has been trying for two years to prevent. It would change 215 years of tradition, and would directly contradict the Framers of the Constitution.