Frist To Change Filabuster From 60 To S. Majority?

[Guest keelebasa]

While I'm no huge fan of Senate filabustering, the hypocrisy on both sides of the aisle knows no bounds.

 

When the control of the Senate was more tightly contested, the Democrats introduced a similar anti-filabuster bill. The Republicans were then against it.

 

Now that the Republicans clearly control the Senate and the Democrats are clearly the opposition party, the Democrats either choose to blame their filabustering on President Bush or they oppose a bill that's first cousin to one of their own. Naturally, the Republicans no longer are against it.

 

The hypocrites are truly slandering the sacred halls of truth. I grow weary of the two-party system. Let's end it progressively over the next five to seven decades instead of letting it end the America of the Founding Fathers. Sigh. I'm writing one of my good Senators, the Honorable Senator Frist. In fact, I'm calling him.

 

Frist Moves to Change Rules, End Judicial Filibusters

 

Capitol Hill (CNSNews.com) - Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) introduced a resolution Friday that would end the filibuster against two of President George Bush's judicial nominees by Senate Democrats. The move came just before a Rose Garden appearance with the president at the White House.

 

Bush expressed his displeasure with the delay in voting on his nominees during that meeting.

 

"Exactly two years ago, I announced my first 11 nominees to the federal appeals court," he said. "I chose men and women of talent and integrity, highly qualified nominees who represent the mainstream of American law and American values.

 

"Eight of them waited more than a year without an up-or-down vote in the United States Senate. As of today, three of that original group have waited two years," Bush continued. "Their treatment by a group of senators is a disgrace."

 

Later, Frist stressed to reporters that he is not telling people how to vote.

 

"As majority leader, I don't want to tell people how to vote, but I do want to respect that basic tenet of the Constitution of 'advice and consent' that gives every United States senator that right, that ability to give advice and consent," Frist said as a light rain began to fall on those attending a press conference outside the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington.

 

"As long as you have Democrats filibustering in this unprecedented way," he continued, "our Senators are being denied...that opportunity to give that advice and consent. Why? Because they're being denied that opportunity to vote."

 

Earlier this week, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) tried to blame Bush for the filibusters.

 

"Yes, we're sort of at a deadlock, but this was not started by Democrats in the Senate," Schumer claimed. "This was brought on because President Bush, as he said it in his campaign, he said he chooses to nominate people in the mold of Scalia and Thomas ... Bush's nominees have had a hugely ideological caste, and we have had no choice."

 

Frist proposes up to 13 days of debate, then a vote

 

The Frist plan would guarantee that a minority of senators could force up to 13 days of debate on any judicial nominee. If they chose to filibuster, 61 votes would be required to invoke cloture - the term for breaking a filibuster - on the first attempt. The first cloture motion could not be filed until the nomination has been pending before the Senate for 12 hours.

 

If that motion failed, each successive cloture motion would require three fewer votes to end debate, dropping the requirement to 57 three days later and then 54 after three additional days. If, after 13 total days of debate, three cloture motions had failed, a final vote to end debate and bring the nomination up for a vote would require only 51 senators or a simple majority of the senators present and voting, whichever is less.

 

Frist's resolution is modeled after a proposal introduced in March by Georgia Democrat Zell Miller. Miller's plan was based on a resolution originally introduced in 1995 by Democrats Tom Harkin of Iowa and Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut. Unlike their proposals, however, Frist's resolution includes the initial 12 hours of debate and applies only to presidential nominees, not legislative proposals.

 

'We're here to say they're dead wrong'

 

Bush nominated former U.S. Assistant Solicitor General Miguel Estrada and Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen two years ago Friday. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a former colleague of Owen's on Texas' high court, said Democrats' strategy of "delay in hopes of surrender" is destined to fail.

 

"The obstructionists are hoping that over time, we will grow tired and just go away," Cornyn said. "The Democrats' leadership thinks that they can get away with blocking these well-qualified nominees, but we're here today to say they're dead wrong."

 

Cornyn was backed by representatives from more than a dozen organizations supporting Estrada, Owen or both.

 

C. Boyden Gray, former White House counsel to President George H.W. Bush, noted that a partisan filibuster has never been used to block judicial nominees until now.

 

"If the Senate, in its wisdom, does not like any of these nominees, it can vote them down in an up-or-down vote," he said. "The filibuster...is a brand new, unconstitutional device, and it ought to be terminated right now."

 

Groups launch ad campaigns to oppose filibusters

 

Gray is chairman of the Committee for Justice, which released a cartoon Friday depicting Democrat senators Patrick Leahy (Vt.), Edward Kennedy (Mass.), Charles Schumer (N.Y.), Hillary Clinton (N.Y.) and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (S.D.) as missiles under the headline "Weapons of Mass Obstruction."

 

The advertisement in which the cartoon appears sarcastically quotes terminology from Daschle's recent criticism of President Bush's foreign policy and urges the quintet to "Let our judges go!"

 

The Committee for Justice is not the only group supporting the president's judicial nominees to purchase advertising or to turn Daschle's own words against him.

 

The Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF) has distributed an ad entitled simply, "Hypocrite!" that quotes some of Daschle's past Senate floor statements on judicial nominees.

 

"I find it baffling that a senator would vote against even voting on a judicial nomination," Daschle told his colleagues on October 5, 1999.

 

"Hispanic or non-Hispanic, African American or non-African American, woman or man, it is wrong not to have a vote on the Senate floor," the South Dakota Democrat said on October 28, 1999.

 

Jeffrey Mazzella, CFIF's senior vice president of legislative affairs, challenged Daschle to be true to his own word.

 

"Tom Daschle is a leader in the United States Senate. It's about time he start acting like one," Mazzella said. "To oppose a judicial nominee is one thing, but to deny all 100 senators their advice and consent role in the process is unconscionable.

 

"For Daschle," he concluded, "it's blatantly hypocritical."

 

Democrats claim Frist's resolution would require a two-thirds majority to pass because Senate Rule XXII - the filibuster rule - includes a provision mandating that majority. Republican staff in the Senate have found supporting precedent to argue that all rule changes require only "a simple majority of the Senators present and voting."

 

If Democrats object to the rules change, Senate observers predict their objection will merely be ruled out of order.

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

I thought you couldn't get rid of filibustering. Oh well.

 

And keel, a word of advice, if you're going to post outside articles, provide a link. If you need, I'll be more than happy to show you via PM...

[Rob E Dangerously 0]

it takes 67 votes to change Senate rules, if I recall correctly

[Guest Cerebus]

^^Correct. Which means that the Democrats will never let one of their few trump cards off without a fight.

[The Czech Republic 0]

I'm behind this all the way. I don't want Hillary Clinton sitting there reading the Greater Washington-Baltimore Yellow Pages.