http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/994423/posts Check out Lindsay Graham, from Byron York's good Pickering column:
Graham took as his starting point a statement that Schumer had made earlier in the meeting. Slamming Pickering over the cross-burning case, and then criticizing the White House for nominating him, Schumer said, "We'd prefer to find consensus, agreement, and comity. But if the administration insists on a fight, then a fight they'll get."
"If I thought that Judge Pickering somehow condoned cross burning, it would be the easiest decision in the world to vote no," Graham began. "And if you really believe that, then you're absolutely right, you should vote no."
The truth is, the man's been under siege for a couple of years now, and I can only imagine what he and his family went through. It's been total hell. There's nothing worse you can say about somebody other than they're a racist. And there's nothing worse you can say about a southern white person than that they're a racist. We have to live with that all the time, and it's our own fault to a certain extent.
In my state, 31-percent African American, we're a long way away from South Carolina being where it should be. The incomes in my state of African Americans are dramatically lower than the population as a whole. So I don't want anyone to leave this room today thinking that we've fixed our racial problems in the South. We have not.
But I tell you, you need to look at your own states and see if you've fixed them in your state. There's a long way to go, and beating on this good man is not going to make us a better nation.
The reason we're here is that you all have chosen a handful of nominees — and there are not many, but one is too many — and you've used the tactic of stopping them from having a vote up or down on the floor. And we will respond in the future, and the country will be the great loser.
What's happening is going to doom the future of the U.S. Senate, because if you think the people on my side of the aisle, when there's a Democratic president, are going to sit back and not do the same thing — that's just naive.
This is history being made in the United States Senate. This is horrible history. It's happening on our watch. God, I wish I could fix it. But I don't see it being fixed.
Senator Schumer said let the fight begin. The fight has begun, and the fight needs to be taken to its logical conclusion. We need to break these filibusters, we need to bring reason back to the table, and we need to stop taking good men and women who are well qualified by the bar association and saying that they are racists.
Do you know what it must have been like in 1967 to get on the stand and testify against the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi? Do you have any idea what courage that took? Shame on you.
By the end, Graham was nearly in tears and the room was silent. It was an almost stunning conclusion to a meeting that had just a few minutes before seemed entirely recycled and pre-scripted.
let's see how the Pubs handle Pickering and Brown...