[ken5050]

And that may be why she's coming up first..because it will be hard later on for the red-state Dems to vote NO on all of Bush's nominees..I just caught some of the replay of the Dem presser from this morning..Tim Johnson doesn't look happy..

[Cboldt]

I just checked all of the cloture votes in Calendar 2003. Owen had 4 of them. Only two DEMs voted to invoke cloture, Zell Miller and Nelson, of Nebraska.

The only other DEMs that voted for cloture in any of those (Brown, Kuhl, Owen (4 votes), Pryor (2 votes), Pickering and Estrada (7 votes)) were Breaux and Nelson of Florida.

Did you catch Frist's presser just now? He said debate until debate is exhausted (did not give a time certain), and he also did not give the name of the nominee he would bring up. He did note that he preferred unanimous consent to take the vote.

Now that puts pressure on the DEMs to stand up and voice their objections, and then to get on with it. While they certainly have the technical right to object to taking the vote, it is hard to sell the imposition of a 60 vote supermajority for handling nominees.