Posted on 03/19/2005 10:26:40 PM PST by neverdem
With Republicans inclined to change Senate rules to make filibusters of judicial nominees impossible, Democrats have recklessly given Republicans an additional incentive to do so. It is a redundant incentive, because Republicans think -- mistakenly -- that they have sufficient constitutional reasons for doing so.
Today 60 Senate votes are required to end a filibuster. There are 55 Republican senators but not five Democrats who will join them. Republicans may seek a ruling from the chair -- Vice President Cheney presiding -- that filibustering judicial nominees is impermissible, a ruling that a simple majority of senators could enforce.
Democrats say they would retaliate by bringing the Senate to a virtual halt -- easily done within Senate rules. Republicans rejoice that such obstructionism would injure the Democrats. But conservatives would come to rue the injury done to their cause by the rule change and by their reasoning to justify it.
Some conservatives call filibusters of judicial nominations unconstitutional because they violate the separation of powers by preventing the president from doing his constitutional duty of staffing the judiciary. But the Senate has the constitutional role of completing the staffing process that the president initiates.
Some conservatives say the Constitution's framers "knew what supermajorities they wanted" -- the Constitution requires various supermajorities, for ratifying treaties, impeachment convictions, etc.; therefore, other supermajority rules are unconstitutional. But it stands conservatism on its head to argue that what the Constitution does not mandate is not permitted. Besides, the Constitution says each house of Congress "may determine the rules of its proceedings."
Some conservatives say there is a "constitutional right" to have an up-or-down Senate vote on nominees. But in whom does this right inhere? The nominees? The president? This is a perverse contention coming from conservatives eager to confirm judges who will stop the promiscuous...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
It would be nice to have 5 more senate seats...
I am soooo sick of liberals and other assorted moonbats.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
..and destroy that warm and fuzzy bipartisanship they claim is all they want?
Fine .. BRING IT ON
As for Goerge Will ... please re-read the rules about Judges
It does not.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
Just one more piece of evidence that the Compost and Liberalism are both nuttier than a Christmas fruitcake.
The future will bring Democratic presidents and Senate majorities. How would you react were such a majority about to change Senate rules to prevent you from filibustering to block a nominee likely to construe the equal protection clause as creating a constitutional right to same-sex marriage? .."
Will's essay is full of crap. Robert Bork's story tells you all you need to know about the Democrats. We are in the age of politics to the knife and the GOP needs to start playing that way. Never expect genuine comity or mercy from those animals.
There is a lot of truth in what Will says, but I am skeptical about whether a supermajority vote requirement for judges is constitutionally acceptable.
Granted, the Republicans could use the issue to their advantage in the next election, but wouldn't that be tantamount to admitting that supermajority requirements are permissible to confirm judges? Based on the Constitution's wording on the matter, I don't think that the Founders believed that supermajorities were needed for judicial nominations.
Will seems in love with the idea of 60 GOP senators, when practically speaking, what he is really in love with is a lot of vacancies on SCOTUS and chokepoint appellate slots in DC and the 9th circuit, and a couple of other circuits that really matter. Grey moderate nominees simply won't cut it given how politicized the federal courts have become, and how abusive they have been in exercising power. Both parties will want to nominate only reliables given the stakes, and I don't blame them for that. I blame the courts.
The Post again thunderously affirms its hilarious cluelessness about conservatism with this genuinely preposterous line. One might be as conservative as Hamilton or as radical as Jefferson in one's reading of the Constitution, and still recognize that this is in fact what the Constitution itself actually says.
To wit,
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. " (Amendment X).
Understanding the meaning of liberalism in the classical sense forces those of us who know history to remark that its stands the meaning of liberalism on its head for so-called liberals to defame the Bill of Rights as something that not even conservatives could be foolish enough to defend.
He just gives the Post and Newsweek the appearance they aren't as Liberal as they truly are.
What section of the USC is the filibuster in again? I've looked and looked, but cannot find it.
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