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President Obama delivered remarks today supporting Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid’s decision to deploy the “nuclear option” ending minority filibusters of some judicial nominees. The Democrats tried to limit the effect of their action, stating that it only applies to nominees below the Supreme Court level. But the damage done will go far beyond judicial nominees. Bipartisanship in the Senate is dead. Harry Reid and Barack Obama had already done grave damage to it by passing Obamacare. Today they finished it off. Democrats currently hold a 53 seat majority, plus 2 Independents who tend to side with the Democrats. A...

The rule of law has been replaced in Washington by "yes we can." The events we witnessed Thursday in the Senate, that is Majority Leader Harry Reid's success at invoking the so-called 'nuclear option,' stripping the minority party of its primary power to block nominations, have become a stunning capstone to what has been already a steady erosion of a government of laws down to a sort of semi-political banana republic. We are now living in a republic in which politicians do what they want without regard to tradition or the best interests of our country. The rule of more...

......Sen. Carl Levin (Mich.), one of just three Democrats who opposed his colleagues’ naked power grab, read those words on the Senate floor Thursday after Reid invoked the nuclear option. The rumpled Levin is not known for his oratory. But he is retiring next year and free to speak his mind — and his words were potent. “We need to change the rules, but to change it in the way we changed it today means there are no rules except as the majority wants them,” Levin said. “This precedent is going to be used, I fear, to change the rules...

"...As Majority Leader Harry Reid orchestrated the change in the rules governing executive nominations and lower-court appointments, his opponents cried tyranny, though they also promised that when they took power they would go further, applying the new standard to Supreme Court nominations. In other words, tyranny—but we promise we'll give you more of it. The new rules fit with that kind of Senate. ...Whoever is ultimately at fault for the rule change—the Democrats who forced it or the Republicans who blocked the nominations requiring the new rules—the result is that the minority will have less power. That means elections will...

Ok, I did it. I flipped over to PMSNBC during a commerical. I caught Al Sharpton showing a clip of Rush talking about how Obama can be a dictator due to the Senate rule changes. Sharpton has no problems with the rule changes and yelled (he always yells on his program), "No, Obama is just doing what was elected to do, and elected again to do."

November 21, 2013 Nuclear Fallout The Editors What is the filibuster? It is “a time-honored Senate procedure that prevents a bare majority of senators from running roughshod,” according to our friends on the New York Times editorial page. But that was in 2005, when Republicans frustrated over Democratic filibusters of President George W. Bush’s judicial nominations were (with National Review’s support) considering the so-called nuclear option, the overblown name of which suggests that it is rather more than a change in the Senate’s procedural rules. The Times denounced the Republicans’ “rank hypocrisy” in 2005, as did any number of Democrats....

Mark Levin opened his show with another epic monologue explaining that what’s really going on with this so-called nuclear option is that Obama wants to run this nation out of the Oval Office. Listen:

<p>We should have known this was coming. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has warned he would do something along these lines. He has proven, in this instance, at least, that he can be trusted to do what he said he would do.</p>

US President Barack Obama has supported a motion passed by Senate Democrats which weakens Republicans' ability to block White House nominations. The measure, known as the "nuclear option", curbs the power of the upper chamber's minority party to use a blocking tactic known as a filibuster. Mr Obama said the practice had gone too far, and was "not normal". Republicans vowed they would use the new rule against Democrats if they won back the Senate in the next election. Correspondents said Thursday's motion, which passed 52-48, will make American politics even more acrimonious. 'Power grab' At the White House on...

Mitch McConnell offered a one-liner after Harry Reid’s decision to launch the nuclear option that jabbed at both Reid’s reversal on the issue as well as the controversy surrounding Obamacare. “He may just as well have said if you like the rules of the Senate, you can keep them!” he gibed, to laughter from the audience. He pointed to Reid’s comments from just a few months ago, in which he stated that he would not bring forward the nuclear option in regard to President Obama’s nominees for the D.C. Circuit, saying the reversal reflects the Democrats’ recent reputation for making...

Senate Democrats bowled over Republicans on Thursday to win approval for a highly controversial rule change which would limit the GOP's ability to block nominees. Majority Leader Harry Reid, moving quickly following days of speculation, used the so-called "nuclear option" to pass the change. Typically, major changes like this take 67 votes, but he did it with just a simple majority. With Republicans fuming, the change weakens the power of the minority to stall nominations for top positions. Instead of needing 60 votes to break a filibuster, the change means Democrats will now need just 51.

So in 2005 it was bad when GWB was in power but in 2013, its good because he is Pres. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q6aqw_SfU0&feature=youtu.be

Harry Reid is set to “go nuclear.” He wants to end the filibuster as it applies to appellate court nominations — not by a two-thirds vote of the Senate, as Senate rules require, but by a simple majority. And given the short memories now in evidence, he may just succeed. On Monday, for the third time in less than a month, Senate Republicans filibustered an Obama nominee to the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. That’s the court that’s checked the president more than once, as when it said he couldn’t make “recess appointments” when the Senate wasn’t in...

Senate Democrats eased the way for swift approval of President Barack Obama’s current and future nominees on Thursday, voting unilaterally to overturn decades of Senate precedent and undermine Republicans’ ability to block final vote. The 52-48 vote to undercut venerable filibuster rules on presidential appointees capped more than a decade of struggle in which presidents of both parties complained about delays in confirming appointees, particularly to the federal courts. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who launched the move, accused Republicans of “unbelievable, unprecedented obstruction” of Obama’s selections to fill court vacancies and other offices. “It’s time to change the Senate,...

The Senate is on the verge of striking down the long-standing filibuster rules for most presidential nominations, potentially doing so on a party-line vote that would alter nearly 225 years of precedent. Democrats, infuriated by what they see as a pattern of obstruction and delay over President Obama’s nominees, expect to trigger the showdown by bringing up one of the recent judicial nominees whom Republicans blocked by a filibuster. According to senior Democratic aides, Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) will set in motion a complicated parliamentary process that ends with a simple-majority vote setting a new rule that will...

All the action today appears to be in the Senate. They just finished voting on a motion to proceed to confirm one of Obama's nominees to the DC Court of Appeals, and it failed to get the necessary 60 votes to proceed. This is the 3rd nominee that the GOP has blocked, and Reid had threatened to go nuclear, to change the rules by a simple MAJORITY vote. Before that could happen, McConnell moved that the Senate adjourn until 5PM..a privileged motion which must be voted on. The roll call is underway.

Under the leadership of Harry Reid, and with the blessing of President Obama, Senate Democrats actually  nuked the filibuster.According to Chris Cillizza, Sean Sullivan, the issue that Reid saw as important enough to do something he said would change the U.S. Senate forever is the confirmation of three nominees to the U.S. Court of Appeals – D.C. Circuit: This time around, Democrats have pushed three nominees to the crucial D.C. circuit court, which handles most of the critical cases on interpreting federal law. The Rs say the court — which tilts toward GOP-appointed judges at the moment — doesn’t need...