Filibusters!

[Rían]

The Republicans are apparently trying to change Senate procedural rules (which is not a big deal - they're just procedural rules) to break the Democratic filibusters against Pres. Bush's judicial nominees, so that the Senate can give every nominee an up-or-down confirmation vote, as they should be able to. The problem is that judicial nominees should receive an up-or-down vote, and a simple majority will OK them. However, filibusters require a 60-vote bloc to kill them off, so senators can read the phone book week after week and call it "debate" and force a vote to NOT be taken.

Here's an article about it. I've bolded some of the sections that I find to be more relevant. There's some posturing by both sides, but let's look at the actual data.

From an article by Citizen magazine:

In a letter to Majority Leader Bill Frist, Minority Leader
Harry Reid indicated his party would refuse to act on most
legislation if the GOP reinstated the 51-vote threshold
for approving judicial nominees.

"We will be reluctant to enter into any consent agreement
that facilitates Senate activities, even on routine
matters," Reid, D-Nev., wrote. He added that exceptions
would be made for national security matters and "critical
government services."

Reid's comments are meant to protest what Democrats have
characterized as a power grab by Republicans, who have
indicated they are willing to change Senate rules to
ensure that Democrat-led filibusters against President
Bush's judicial nominees can be broken and every nominee
can receive an up-or-down confirmation vote.

But conservative activists, joined by some of the nation's
top constitutional law experts, say it's the Democrats who
have wrongly seized hold of power -- and the Founding
Fathers never intended for a handful of senators to be
able to hold nominees hostage.

Focus on the Family Action Vice President of Government
and Public Policy Tom Minnery took Reid to task.

"Today we have witnessed an unbelievable act of arrogance
by Senate Democrats," Minnery said. "By threatening to
effectively shut down the Senate, they have displayed the
true depth of their intolerant and vehement opposition to
judges who would strictly interpret and apply the
Constitution. Sen. Reid and his colleagues have themselves
argued in the past that all nominees deserve an up-or-down
vote -- that is, until it served their agenda to change
their tune."

What's more, one of America's foremost constitutional law
experts, Pepperdine University Law Professor Douglas
Kmiec, said the picture Democrats are painting of what the
media call the "nuclear option" is anything but accurate.

"The 'nuclear option' is not at all nuclear, but
constitutional," Kmiec told CitizenLink. "The 'nuclear
option' is merely the Senate of the United States acting
appropriately with regard to their 'advice and consent'
function."

Kmiec said Alexander Hamilton and the Federalist Papers
anticipated that the full Senate would pass presidential
nominations on to the executive and judicial branches.

"He did not anticipate," Kmiec said, "that these matters
would be handled in committee, or that they would simply
be precluded from taking a vote on the floor, even though
a majority of senators have time and time again indicated
support for these nominations."

The problem, the professor added, is that there is a set
of Senate rules that have been imposed on the Senate down
through the years that "a good portion of the Senate" has
never voted on.

"These Senate rules require a supermajority -- 60 votes --
to close debate," Kmiec said. "They require 67 votes to
change the rules, and members of the Senate have never had
an opportunity to approve these."

Kmiec said it is as if a prior Senate had said something
like, "No Democratic legislation can ever be repealed,
unless there's a unanimous vote."

"Obviously, that would be absurd," he said. "And carryover
rules like the rules that allow these judicial nominations
to be filibustered are equally constitutionally
problematic, if not outright unconstitutional. So, there's
nothing nuclear about the option."

That won't stop Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.V., from leading a
rally and "national call-in day" Wednesday in Washington,
D.C., organized by the staff of the left-wing political
Web site MoveOn.org. The event's purpose is to demand that
Americans "stand up to Bush's plan to stack the courts" --
as the rally's promotional material puts it.

Speaking last week on the Senate floor, Byrd compared
Republican efforts to reinstate confirmation rules to a
Nazi takeover, declaring: "We, unlike Nazi Germany or
Mussolini's Italy, have never stopped being a nation of
laws, not of men."

Kmiec dismissed the allegation that Bush is attempting to
stack the courts.

"Let's have that debate," he said. "If, in fact, the
minority in the Senate (Democrats) can convince a majority
of their members that President Bush's nominees are
outside of the legal mainstream, that they are
intemperate, that they are incapable of applying the law
in a fair and even-handed manner -- that would be a debate
well-worth having. The problem is, they aren't willing to
have that debate.

"In fact," he added, "if anyone is trying to 'stack' the
court, it's the effort of the Senate minority, who's
consistently using political outcomes and ideology to keep
fair-minded men and women from being nominated and
appointed to the court."