Whelan makes excellent points here. Hopefully, the White House Counsel (or Attorney General) will state the correct interpretation.
I have always consider the "Advice" part to be the Judiciary Committee review and approval of the nominee. The whole Senate doesn't get to "Consent" until the Judiciary Committee "Advises" that the nominee is approved by the committee.
At fist I thought this was a 100% Democrap win. Now I have read a bit more on this thing, I am starting to incline toward a Dem. loss to a degree. But not ENOUGH to a degree.
-It looks like the GOP has won the ability to deploy the supposed nuclear option at any other time. We are at a cooling off period as the above said.
-The GOP has won the up or down vote on some of the stalled nominees.
-The Dems have won the appearance of working "with" the GOP and being the "compromisers" shading the GOP as the ones who were fighting too hard.
-But the Dems have lost the ability to filibuster the judges as strongly as they were claiming they were going to. Because if they DO go on to filibuster from this point it will look like they are just plain liars. So, they lost that point.
This is my feeling currently. I will have to see some more reporting to be sure, though.
I agree he makes excellent points but in my mind it's akin to the 1938 agreement and "peace in our time".
this "might" last until Scalia gets nominated for CJ and then a strong conservative gets nominated to fill his post.
It's over when O'Conner resigns and suddenly the Court hangs in the balance according to the Dems.
I guess my bottom line is why now?
Why are these seven afraid of grabbing some real power for a change.
We made a deal we didn't need to make.
OTOH, McCain just lost 20% of the 2008 primary voters and Allen/Frist just picked them up.