I posted this earlier..worth repeating..FRist has lost 4 votes..McCain, Chaffee, and Maine's Pigeon sisters...so that's 41..there atre 3 left who are supposedly wavering..Specter, Warner and Hagel..I can't conveice of two committee chairs going againt the leader, and if Hagel wants to be president, well..so, it's a solid 51..
Primary voters will be watching
PRESIDENT BUSH and U.S. Senate Republicans have the far better case in the matter of Democrats refusing to allow judges to be voted on in a straightforward, up-or-down fashion. The problem is that Republicans aren't very good at public relations "spin" — and the Democrats have a ready ally in much of Big Media.
But if the Republicans don't wise up and have the guts to stop the Democrats' current misuse of the filibuster, they will find that a President Hillary Clinton and her pals will have no such problem in suddenly "discovering" that the Founding Fathers never intended judges or other Presidential appointments to be blocked in this manner.
The filibuster — the rules of which have in fact been changed (by Democrats) over the years — has been used and was intended to be used to slow or block legislation. Sometimes, it has been used disgracefully so. Civil rights legislation was blocked for decades by anti-black Southern senators.
But only when George Bush came to office four years ago did Democrats in the Senate use the threat of filibuster to block judicial nominations from getting before the full Senate for a simple majority vote.
This has to be one of the great and most shameless legal loophole flimflams in our history. With courts being overrun by judicial activists, the voters' only recourse is to elect a President and Senate that will appoint judges who won't try to re-make the law.
To let a small group of extremist Democrats block even a vote on those appointments with this legalistic trick is outrageous. We are quite sure the Presidential Primary voters of New Hampshire will be watching carefully to see how Republican senators act on this crucial matter.