[Adder]

What "rights" does the minority have?
They've been heard and none of them were lined up and shot.
Now its time to vote. If they are right and have been persuasive, they will win.

[stm]

The dementacrats have lost their minds (and credibility) over this nonsense.

The horrors, a Republican President wants some conservative judges nominated for positions on Federal Benches. I guess a dementacratic President has never thought to do this before.

[olde north church]

I called Eleanor Norton's office yesterday (5/19) to tell them as a man of color (Italian = Latin = if Hispanic is color, so then should be Italian), I am utterly outraged by her incomplete, yada, yada, yada. I felt better.

[GianniV]

Think Tim Russert, that Wallace jerk or the midget Stephanopolous will bring this up? The DEMOCRAT filibustering of the Civil Rights Act is a fact.

[MurryMom]

One claim the GOP likes to make is that they were justified in blocking many of Clinton's judicial nominees in the 90s because they were in the majority in Congress. Dems should now be supine, they say, because the right comparison to make is with the Senate Republicans in the first two years of Clinton's first term, when they were in the minority - and as docile as can be.

Only problem is, that story isn't true. Even when the Democrats held a 56-44 advantage in the Senate in 1993 & 1994, the Republicans still tried to stop nominees they didn't like. Here's a tale about one of them.

In 1993, Larry LaRocco, then a Democratic Congressman from Idaho, suggested to Bill Clinton that attorney John Tait be nominated to fill a vacant federal district judgeship in the state. The following year, Clinton went ahead and put Tait's name forward.

But GOP Sen. Larry Craig (and his former Idaho colleague Dirk Kempthorne) were irked about being left out of the process - usually senators get to advise presidents about judicial nominees, but because they were Republicans, they got passed over in favor of LaRocco. Primarily, of course, they were pissed about a Democrat (Tait) getting the nod.

So what did the aggrieved Idaho senators do? Did they just take their lumps and quietly lie down? Hardly:

"Two months ago, U.S. Sens. Larry Craig and Dirk Kempthorne successfully blocked Tait's confirmation hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee."

Lewiston Morning Tribue, 12/14/1994

[Laissez-faire capitalist]

April 21, 2005
Filibuster Rules: Then & Now
In 1995, 19 Democrats voted to eliminate all filibusters.

by Sean Rushton

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/rushton200504211218.asp Learn and disseminate this knowledge. Who introduced the bill to eliminate all filibusters? Sens. Lieberman and Tom Harkin. Ted Kennedy and John Kerry supported the measure.