Posted on 05/23/2005 11:10:50 AM PDT by QQQQQ
Cots were brought into the Capitol Monday as Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist scheduled an all-night session stretching into Tuesday to dramatize the debate over President Bush’s judicial nominees and the filibusters that Democrats have used to block votes on 10 of them.
The Senate debated the nomination of appeals court hopeful Priscilla Owen for four days last week and is set to vote on a motion to end the Owen debate on Tuesday.
Opening debate Monday morning, Frist reminded Democrats that he has offered them 100 hours of debate on each judicial nomination, an offer they rejected.
In Tuesday's vote, the key will be how many Democrats decide to join the 55 Republican senators in voting for the cloture motion. Under the current rules of the Senate, it takes 60 senators to vote to end debate.
If Frist does not win the cloture vote, he would seek a ruling of the presiding officer that further debate was dilatory. If the Senate sustained such a ruling by majority vote, then the filibuster-ending threshold would be lowered from 60 to 51.
Frist's proposed filibuster rule change would apply only to nominations, not to legislation.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Thanks, I agree. The Senate is supposed to be the more civil half of Congress.
Exactly. NOW is the time. Frist will be foolish is he waits for a SC justice appointment to make the rules change.
Originally comes from the first Godfather movie - the idea there is that the mattresses are going to stop the bullets. Here that meaning is retained but there is also the meaning that the senate will be going to the senate-critters need somplace to sleep.
It was a line used in the Godfather.
Ugh. That should have gone back to me...
I believe granting ones self the power to halt legislative votes based on personal chamber procedures is abusive on the face of it. Like allowing a states's senators to hold a appointee up in committee. I realize that these parlamentary techniques will be used as long as the legislative bodies allow them to be used. I would much prefer a rules change to use Robert's rules of order and get on with the people's business.
PS, this would not damage the "conservative" nature of the senate, their members still only have to stand for election every 6 years, that is conservative enough.
I always thought that had to do with Ted Kennedy. Oh, wait, that's going to the submarines...
Question did the Goauld somehow taken over Frist???
As explained in the movie The Godfather, "going to the mattresses" meant escalating a battle such that extra gunmen have to be brought in and given mattresses to sleep on.
They may wait until some moment further in out in time when they think some other - and unrelated - media assault on the GOP has strengthened their hand.
They do not want to do it year if at all possible before any Supreme Court fight.
They evidently think that it is in their advantage to push the fight closer to the midterms.
This seems odd to me - do they have some other "scandals" up their sleeves.
Frist shoudlreally stop worrying about what the media does and somehow just force the issue. It will make a SCOTUS fight that much easier to win.
The public that want Conservative judges will remember in 06 in the GOP did the rightnthing and the so called "moderates" will have forgotten about it.
Next year, I imagine, Bush will spring tax reform on the Congress and that will be the big issue.
The GOP in the Senate should listen to their constituencies and forget about their "National Posture" as a body, a party or as individuals. They are just fooling themselves that they can get any advantage for anyone by posing as "moderates."\
Had the tables been turned, the Rats would ave already nuked the filibuster months ago, and they would certainly do it if Hillie was in the WH nad they could get 51 votes.
They are just making matter worse for themselves by all of this dithering. Act now and the voters will forgive and mostly forget, provided they get good judges. There is no sign that the general public buy this notion that he Democrats are in the "mainstream" and the GOP is not, nor do we seem to see that the demonization of the "Christian Right" is gaining any traction nanywhere but in the hard core left.
The GOP leadership spends too much time in the beltway. They need to go back home and listen to the voters that put them in office.
He should have MANDATED 100 hours of debate.
Make the dems stand at the podium and talk 24/7.
I think the idea is that the "family" members all bunk up at a secret location to be safe from hits while having a base to launch operations from themselves. They can stay together for protection while not jeopardizing their homes and families. Remember Clemenza saying to make sure the mattresses were clean because the guys might be staying there a while. Mattresses were not expected to stop bullets.
From Phrase Finder:
At San Miniato al Monte before going to war with Charles V and Medici Pope Clement VII, Michelangelo was put in charge of defense of the building. "After throwing up dirt ramparts and cobbling together defensible walls out of oak timbers, Michelangelo helped poor Lapo out by devising an ingenious way to protect the tower: He hung mattresses down the sides to absorb the shock of the cannonballs fired at it and left the tower (and, more important, Lapo) still standing." -Quote is from Frommers. http://www.frommers.com/destinations/florence/A33303.html
Don't be surprised if Sheets Byrd has a play-for-sympathy medical condition happen at 1:00am.
MSM: "Those insensitive republicans keeping a senior citizen up at all hours of the night while pushing their partisan agenda".
LOL
Frist should have DEMANED that if the 'Rats wanted to filibuster that they would HAVE TO BE THERE 24/7 to filibuster!!!
that would have ended this nonsense YEARS AGO!!!
I'll pledge $100.00 to any opponent of a RINO that votes with the Rats on judicial filibusters!
The Senate pulling an all nighter..ha ha.. They are going to cut into teddy kennedys drinking time..
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