ConfirmThem

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

The latest from Rush Limbaugh on this controversy:

What can you not say about somebody in a hundred hours? A hundred hours is more than anybody needs to debate anything. Frist's offer to allow senators to retain the right to filibuster district court nominees is part of an arrangement in which confirmation votes would be guaranteed on the nation's highest judgeships after a hundred hours of debate.

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[W]hat we do here is make the complex understandable. The simplest way to explain this to people is the Democrats are not allowing votes. They talk about counting every vote out in Ohio and in Florida. They're not allowing one vote on these nominees on the floor of the Senate.

Now, here's Jim Wooten from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and his last sentence is especially concise:

The nation has reached the point where Senate Democrats block votes to allow their interest groups to slowly trash the reputations of deserving nominees, as they did with Charles Pickering, the Mississippi judge who withdrew after a recess appointment to the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. He declined to continue the brutalizing process. And who could blame him?

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That, though, is the primary aim of Democrats and liberal interest groups: Make the process so intimidating and unpleasant that President Bush and conservative nominees will eventually give up, or better yet, decline to stand for confirmation in the first place…. If it's necessary to change the rules to get an up-or-down vote on eminently qualified nominees, do it. Now.

Not that anyone should feel pressured, of course. Additionally, Bill Kristol has a piece called "Break the Filibuster" in the Weekly Standard, citing Professor Crockett of Trinity University in San Antonio.