Posted on 05/24/2005 6:55:47 AM PDT by AliVeritas
FReepers be prepared for surprises today.
(Excerpt) Read more at c-span.org ...
Oh lordy, that woman is one horrible speaker.
HE DID? OMG!
I think Santorum was just trying to smoothe feathers in his own way. I don't believe for one minute that he's joined the 7 Weasels.
You guys should be listening to the Stem Cell Debate on the House Floor. It's great.
As I recall Mccain crashed a military jet in the Gulf of Mexico and while escaping while under water did just the opposite of his training for these situations( because as his normal behavior he did things his way)and destroyed parts of the aircraft by cutting his way out. He was known for not paying attention to rules and procedure,and it could have got him killed,but he NEVER LEARNS by his serious mistakes in judgment.
THe point is that if none of the 7 democrats vote AGAINST cloture, the filibuster will fail (cloture will succeed). That is why the 7 have power. If there were only 4 democrats, Senator Reid would still be talking about how important filibusters were against Owen, instead of watching a MAJORITY of his caucus desert him.
81-18. When released from party loyalties, over HALF of the democrats voted against the filibuster of Owens. We need to write this in letters to every paper in the country. This shows that the Democrat filibuster was NOT a principled stand by the minority, but was rather an enforced party-line vote by a minority of the minority.
Only 18 democrats/socialists wanted to maintain the filibuster.
Do you think that we would have lost half of our votes in the nuclear option vote? My guess is that if they KNEW it was going to fail, we probably would have lost a LOT of votes, but not that many.
The 81-18 vote may have been a ploy by the democrats, but if so it was stupid. We need to advertise the truth of this vote everywhere. The Senate, when voting on Principle, OVERWHELMINGLY REJECTED the Democrat filibuster of judicial nominees. 4 OUT OF 5 Senators. Patrick Leahy, he of the "we will never let Owen have a vote because she is pure evil", voted to END debate.
I listened to Ben Nelson on C-Span, there were callers. I thought he sounded very reasonable, and in fact was thinking that it might be fun to trade him for Voinovich :->
It is possible that the red-state democrats ARE concerned with their constituents, and were looking for the chance to break out.
The democrats made a much bigger leap than the republicans. The republicans gave up NOTHING we actually had. We had never broken a filibuster. We had not gotten a vote on the nuclear option. We couldn't be sure of the Whip Count.
But simply by THREATENING the option, we broke the filibuster. It is not like total victory, but we didn't fire a shot. We didn't try the nuclear option and FAIL. Nobody can make the argument stick that we had a power grab, because we didn't vote for it. We simply raised the level of rhetoric, and the democrats blinked.
We don't get blamed for breaking senate rules, and the democrats broke in two. They WERE winning with the filibuster. They had successfully chased three or more nominees, and were blocking many more. And with a stroke of the pen, they now have LOST the filibuster for most cases.
And all they got in return was a "promise" that if they don't filibuster, we won't try the nuclear option. And they didn't even know if the nuclear option would work or not. They got almost nothing. We are back to where we were 4 years ago. We got the democrats to agree that payback is done and there is a clean slate -- no more "You blocked 61 judges" crap.
There are bad things and bad possiblities in this deal, but it is not a disaster (or at least it may not be).
Great maggie.
He really did he said this? I am in shock! Is nothing sacred? I can count on no one to keep his word?
I believe there is quite a lot of stuff out there to be discovered about McCain. None of it pretty.
Hannity just clarified that Graham will be on at the bottom of the hour and Frist at the top of the next hour.
If Rick stabbed us then I give up! What thr HELL is the point?
McCain has a number of serious character flaws. He is certainly not fit to be President. He should not be a senator for that matter.
lololol
You keep up the good work!
We can be aggravated with grandstanding politicos and still keep our eye on the prize.
The prize: Getting the judicial nominees their vote on the Senate floor.
I don't think he stabbed us! I'm just calling for calm.
She can't even read her speech well. THIS is allegedly "the smartest woman in the world"? And she wants to be our president who represents and speaks (stridently) for us all over the world? She evidently failed Speech 101. No wonder she only went on a "Listening Tour" when she ran for senator.
There's no way this 'woman' will be president.
The Democrats kind of set themselves up for not filibustering bolton, when they argued that judicial nominees were "more important" because they were lifetime appointments while executive nominees were just until the end of the President's term.
Reid also sounded today like he was going to work to help get the vote on Bolton although he said it would be hard (this was part of his "Well, we can't filibuster but we might still talk forever about the judges because rules are rules" speech).
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