To: Luddite Patent Counsel
Where exactly, in the constitution, does it say explicitly that a strict majority vote is all that is needed to approve a presidential nominee? I know it says 2/3 on treaties. Are we to simply infer from that unrelated passage that everything else is just a majority vote? Seems a bit of a leap to me. You've got to be kidding. Actually, I know you're not given your political views. Your point is ridiculous. Majority voting was the principle in Parliament and the default rule of ever colonial assembly. And if the rule isn't a majority, then what is it? 53 votes? 56? 42? 48 on Tuesdays, but 63 on Wednesdays?
Also, when have the Dems "filibustered" any judicial nominee from this administration? I thought a filibuster required holding the floor.
You thought wrong. They altered that awhile back so that Senators wouldn't be passing out on the floor. The minority basically announces a filibuster, and the majority tries for cloture. But the long speeches are a thing of the past, and that's been the case long before the judicial controversy.
35 posted on
12/17/2004 12:08:28 PM PST by
XJarhead
To: XJarhead
You have no clue as to what my political views are. I suspect you are clueless on several other fronts as well. As a practical matter, bills can be killed in a committee with the vote of fewer than ten senators. You want to show me where that's in the constitution? Or was that the "default rule of ever colonial assembly", whatever that means?
If you believe in "expressio unius est exclusio alterius", you would believe that the cloture rule is unconstitutional. Of course, you would also believe that the first amendment doesn't apply to anything other than physical speech and the printed word, so that the ill-tempered ignorance you spew here would not be constitutionally protected. The stronger argument is that the supermajorities listed in the constitution are illustrative, rather than being an exhaustive list of all such rules that can ever be imposed. The cloture rule technically requires a supermajority merely to end debate - a procedural occurrence - not a supermajority to enact the legislation or approve the nomination in question.
As to my other question, a filibuster is still a filibuster, and requires holding the floor during debate. That rule hasn't changed since 1917. The fact that the GOP is too weak-kneed to call the Dem's bluff and make them to get out their cots doesn't change that.
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