ConfirmThem

By AndrewHyman Posted in Senate Rules — Comments () / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

The Weekly Standard has an excellent editorial titled "The Fairness Option." Here's an excerpt:

No Senate Republican should misunderstand the Democrats' motive in blocking the nominations....If the Democrats manage to prevent a vote for the sake of political obstruction, they will set a precedent more momentous than a change in Senate rules.

Of course, that's correct. The Senate has rules, and it also has precedents, and one or the other is going to be changed this month in a profound way.

On a lighter note, Sen. Frist's success is assured, because the "CIA Says Sen. Frist Lacks Nuclear Capability," according to Scrappleface.

But seriously, there's some controversy about a speech that Sen. Frist will be giving at a religious assembly on April 24. Evidently the organizers of the event distributed a flyer decrying the "filibuster against people of faith." Of course, several leading Democrats have indignantly seized upon this scrap (which has not been endorsed in any way by Sen. Frist), in order to distract everyone from the fundamental unfairness of denying up or down votes for qualified judicial nominees. Here's what Sen. Ted Kennedy huffs:

I hope Senator Frist will decide not to participate in this blatant assault on the fundamental principle of separation of church and state.

Isn't this precious? As if Democratic Senators haven't spoken at a million church rallies. And can you really blame some religious people for suspecting that --- just maybe --- the Democratic filibusters are directed at least partly against religious people? Here's what Teddy huffed on July 13, 2004 (while speaking of the proposed federal marriage amendment):

The rabid reactionary religious right has rarely looked more ridiculous. They know they don't have the votes to come even close to passing this amendment, but they have a sufficient stranglehold on the White House and the Republican leadership in Congress to force the issue to a vote anyway, in a desperate effort to arouse their narrowminded constituency and somehow gain an advantage in the elections this year. My guess is their strategy will boomerang and that vastly more Americans will be turned off than are turned on by this appeal to stain the Constitution with their language of bigotry.

No, of course Teddy would never use a filibuster against a nominee associated with the religious right. How bigoted of me to even think such a thing.

The Dems are now simply trying to create a big distraction, as the President's press secretary explained today:

Q Is there a danger in making this a faith issue? It's going to be made a faith issue this weekend.

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, the issue here is that Democrats are not giving these nominees an up or down vote. They're blocking up or down votes on the nominees. That's what the issue is here, and some want to take attention away, try to divert attention away from that. The issue here is that Senate Democrats need to stop playing politics and allow these nominees to have an up or down vote.

So let's try to stick to the point, here. The point is that the President is supposed to nominate judges, not Senator Kennedy. The point is that the Senate has a duty to provide advice and consent if those nominees are qualified. The point is that the Constitution will be stained if the filibuster continues to be used for the first time in American history to permanently block nominees who are deemed qualified by a clear majority of Senators. Even the minority doesn't seriously dispute the nominees' qualifications, and instead they simply want to extort nominees from the President having a different judicial philosophy.

Incidentally, Hugh Hewitt did an interview with Colorado Senator Wayne Allard today, on the filibuster issue. No huge news, but it's interesting.