Posted on 04/09/2005 9:12:17 PM PDT by blam
Republicans plan to end cherished political tradition of the filibuster
By Philip Sherwell in Washington
(Filed: 10/04/2005)
Republican Senate leaders are planning to curb the cherished American political tradition of the filibuster in an effort to prevent the minority Democrats from using the tactic to block the appointment of conservative judges.
The furore over the case of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman who died last month after state and federal courts refused appeals from her parents for her feeding tube to be reinstalled, has given fresh momentum to the campaign by powerful Republicans to challenge the judiciary.
The showdown over the filibuster - a two-centuries-old Senate rule that in effect allows just 41 of the 100 members to obstruct legislation and nominations by talking for as long as they can - is developing into the biggest political clash of President George W. Bush's second term.
Democrats have condemned what has widely been described as the "nuclear option" of rewriting the rules on filibustering and are threatening to retaliate by bringing Senate business to a standstill through a series of other delaying procedures.
Used alongside other tactics such as inviting questions while holding the floor, the filibuster has long been a potent weapon of obstruction in US legislative battles. The right of senators to unlimited debating time dates to the second Congress in 1791. The name filibuster originally referred to the French term for buccaneers in the Caribbean.
The longest filibuster was staged by Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who held forth for 24 hours and 18 minutes in an unsuccessful attempt to block the 1957 Civil Rights Act, only surrendering the floor after his doctor warned him that he risked imminent kidney failure.
Under the rules filibusters must remain standing, cannot lean on the podium or take toilet breaks. Prior to his record-breaking filibuster, Mr Thurmond dehydrated himself in a sauna to delay the call of nature. Filibusters can also choose to "tag-team", speaking as long as possible before yielding the floor to a colleague.
There is no need for a filibustering speech to bear any relevance to the issue the Senate is supposed to be discussing. In the 1930s Senator Huey Long of Louisiana famously used to extol the virtues of fried oysters and recite Shakespeare while opposing legislation that he claimed favoured the rich over the poor.
Among Americans, perhaps the best-known filibuster was the fictional 23-hour speech in Mr Smith Goes to Washington in which the young Senator Jefferson Smith, played by James Stewart, takes on his corrupt and powerful peers.
The filibuster now looms as a potential weapon in the confrontation between conservatives and liberals over President Bush's judicial nominations, which are seen as the key political battleground in what both sides refer to as America's "culture wars".
The immediate conflict is over nominations to federal appeals courts - 10 of the 52 names that Mr Bush put forward during his first term were blocked by filibusters or the threat of one.
The President has resubmitted seven of the rejected 10 to Congress in a signal that he is not willing to compromise on his choices. Democrats claim that the nominees are radical conservatives determined to impose their social agenda on issues such as abortion and gay marriage. Supporters of the nominees say they are well-qualified justices who oppose the sort of so-called judicial "activism" that allowed the courts to establish abortion rights in the first place.
The stakes, however, are expected to escalate because up to three of the nine Supreme Court justices are expected to be replaced during Mr Bush's second four-year term. The separation of powers between the executive, legislature and judiciary gives senior judges considerable clout, meaning that appointments are often hotly contested.
The rules governing the use of the filibuster are complex. Republicans control 55 of the 100 Senate seats, enough for the straight majority required to approve Mr Bush's judicial nominees if they are able to reach a vote.
A filibustering operation can prevent the vote going ahead, however, unless a separate majority of 60 out of the 100 senators votes that the filibuster should not be allowed.
Unable to muster the required figure of 60, Republicans now want to scrap the filibuster option by amending the Senate rules. Plans to do so have been drawn up by Senator Bill Frist, the Republican majority leader expected to run for his party's presidential nomination in 2008.
Conservative and liberal pressure groups have brought their money and power to the opposing sides. On the right, delivering a new tranche of conservative judges is seen as payback to conservative lobbyists for their success in turning out voters for Mr Bush and Republican senators last November.
The poisonous mood in Washington deepened last week when Tom DeLay, the Republican leader in the House of Representatives, the lower chamber, accused federal courts of "running amok" in a speech to a conference entitled Confronting the Judicial War on Faith. Mr DeLay, who has led the condemnation of the courts over the Terri Schiavo case, added: "Judicial independence does not equal judicial supremacy."
The pro-Democrat grouping, People for the American Way, has countered with a series of prime-time television commercials defending the role of the filibuster as an important part of the system of checks and balances that America's founders created to rein in the power of the majority party.
After the Republican attacks on the courts over the Schiavo case, the Democrat minority says it is defending the judiciary against political interference and intimidation. "If they don't get what they want, they attack whoever is around," said Senator Harry Reid, the leader of the Democrat minority. "Now they're after the courts. I think it goes back to this arrogance of power."
The rancour over nominations on Capitol Hill goes beyond new justices. Democrats plan to mount a strong challenge tomorrow when confirmation hearings begin for John Bolton, the hawkish number three at the State Department whom Mr Bush wants to be the next ambassador at the United Nations.
There has never been a filibuster of an appointment of a Federal Judge. Noone is talking about altering the Constitution, only a minor rules change.
Relax, take a deep breath.
L
I thought this "nuclear option" was to prevent the use of the filibuster in a relevant committee to block all progress - in other words being used to prevent a straight up/down vote of the whole senate. No ?
Didn't I also read somewhere that the Dems changed the rules several times while they were in the majority ? Even Sen Byrd doing it in fact >
Well, I got my fingers crossed....
Yes, and it's usually better than this, the guy's picked up some talking-points at happy hour I think.
This Telegraph writer is an idiot.
>>"Republican Senate leaders are planning to curb the cherished American political tradition of the filibuster"
That VERY first sentence proves this moron has no idea what he is talking about. The Republicans are NOT trying to "curb the cherished filibuster." They are stopping the Dems from MISUSING it!!!
Chill. No one's talking about ending the filibuster.
You wouldn't know that from the ads the Rats are running. How they can do that with a straight face is astonishing.
So the Republicans have defeated the Democrat filibuster of judges?
Dump the filibuster - there are enough checks and balances already.
No Senate or House rules should ever trump the priciple of vote man - one vote.
That should read "one man - one vote".
YES!!!
This needs to be shouted!
This is just about preventing the minority on the nominating committee from filibustering nominees they don't like, thus denying them a simple up or down vote on the floor of the senate.
The circulation of misinformation on this has astounded me. I mean this comes after the media's misinformation that Terri Schiavo was on life support and in a persistent vegetative state.
I believe they are proposing changing the rules for Judicial nominations not legislative. Amen.
Agree to a point, but health and death are not in their control. Amen.
Amen.
Carolyn
Amen.
I say get rid of the filibuster, once and for all - just end it.
The Constitution specifies when, in the course of governance, supermajorities will be required. For a branch of government to establish its own supermajorites goes against the grain of what the founders intended when they wrote the Constitution.
I know, I know - the Senate has been going against that grain for two centuries. But just because they've been doing so for so 200 years doesn't make their actions right, any moreso than slavery was "right", even though it was written into the Constitution and laws of the land until that practice, too, was abolished.
Time to end filibustering in the Senate. End it for judicial nominations. End it for everything. From now on, majority votes only on all matters, except those where the Constitution mandates that a supermajority be required.
I can live with that. I can live with it while the Republicans are in power. And I'll live with it when - someday - the Democrats come back into power, as they certainly will.
Having said all that, I'm still skeptical that the Republicans are truly going to "go nuclear". I don't think they have the smarts or the gumption. The Democrats sense this as well, and they _do_ have the political will to resist as best they can. They may even win. In high-stakes politics, the Republicans like to talk the talk. It's walking the walk that they shy away from.
And unless the Pubbies decided to walk the walk on the filibuster, it's possible that G.W. Bush may end his second term with nearly no new judicial confirmations, an eventuality that no poster here is considering yet (just remember that you read about it from _this_ poster first!). In that case, I would advocate that we let the Supreme Court literally "shrink" in membership, rather than fill that bench (or the other federal benches) with a gaggle of David Souters!
Cheers!
- John
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