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

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 Times takes a fascinating look at the appellate confirmation rates of presidents only during periods of time when the same party had the Senate majority. These are some amazing numbers:

[A]ppellate-court-nomination success rates achieved by presidents for the first Senate controlled by their party following the president's election and re-election: Mr. Carter (100 percent); Mr. Reagan (95 percent, 100 percent); Mr. Clinton (100 percent, de facto); G.W. Bush (52.9 percent).

In the same newspaper, Robert Hardaway of the University of Denver pinpoints one major cause of the recent filibuster ruckus: the decision in 1964 to allow Senators to filibuster without holding the floor.

Newsweek has a pretty interesting profile of Priscilla Owen. No, Newsweek doesn't say that she desecrated the Qu'ran, but the magazine does present this misleading information:

In one frequently cited case, Owen ruled against a woman who'd been raped by a door-to-door vacuum salesman. She said that the company should not be held liable for failing to conduct a background check—even though it would have uncovered the salesman's record as a sex offender.

This is really not accurate. The case involved Dena Read, a woman raped in her home by a Kirby vacuum salesman. There were two companies involved, and Owen only said that one of the two companies was liable. The salesman worked not for Kirby, but for a distributor. Kirby’s contract with the distributor specified that Kirby had no control over whom its distributors hired as salesmen. Thus, Justice Owen joined a dissent that said, “No one questions that under these rules, [the distributor] is liable to [the victim] for failing to use reasonable care in selecting [the rapist salesman] as a competent dealer, as the jury found." Patterico discusses this case further. The Newsweek profile also mentions that, according to Justice Owen's pastor, she has a strong belief in the separation of religion and politics, and was "appalled" at the "Justice Sunday" event.

The LA Times has an interesting story today about how President Bush is trying to stay out of the Senate's internal business, even though the White House is very concerned about the matter.

Turning now to the two Nebraska Senators, Chuck Hagel says, "I don't know how I would vote." And, here's some info about Senator Nelson:

Nelson said he's prepared to vote for cloture to reach an up-or-down vote on nearly all of President Bush's blocked nominees. Only in one case could he not support cloture and end a filibuster, he said, and that's because he was denied the opportunity to see the background file on that nominee...[H]e declined to say if he would support the "nuclear option" if a compromise fails.

By the way, Patterico has some interesting comments about the strange attitude of the New York Times (the Times suggests that it's okay for Byrd to compare Republicans to Nazis, but not okay for Santorum to compare Democrats to Nazis).

And, that about does it for our Sunday morning filibuster news update, for now.