WP: A Likely Script for The 'Nuclear Option'

[Pirate Smile]

A Likely Script for The 'Nuclear Option'

By Mike Allen and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, May 18, 2005; Page A01

The "nuclear option" will have a long fuse.

If all goes as planned, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) will rise after several days of debate beginning today over one of President Bush's judicial nominees and call for an end to Democrats' delaying tactics. The presiding officer will then rule in his favor.

Democrats will protest the ruling and ask for a vote to overturn it. The Republican leader will seek to table that appeal. If Frist and the GOP majority prevail, more than half a century of precedents will be overturned, allowing the Republicans to force a vote on a nomination with a simple majority instead of three-fifths of the Senate.

-snip-
But Democrats contend that the Republicans are essentially breaking the rules to change the rules. "If there were ever an example of an abuse of power, this is it," said Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.). "The filibuster is the last check we have against the abuse of power in Washington."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/17/AR2005051701425.html

[Massacure]

1. Let em go nuclear.

It only takes one person to force the senate to read out a bill. Some bills are several thousand pages long, it would take them forever to do. Reid has already promised to make the senate read every bill if Frist goes nuclear.

The republicans may get their damn judges, but they won't get their legislation through.

[AndyTiedye]

3. They Can Change That Rule Too

Once they do away with the filibuster, what's to stop them from
changing all the other rules and just running us over.
Once they pack the Supreme Court, we have no recourse whatsoever.

[Dudley_DUright]

6. Good point

Once you change the rules by breaking the rules, then there are no rules and the repukes can do whatever they want when they want.

[lonestarnot]

11. Oh yes READ EVERY BILL! Now that is an interesting prospect!

Expediency sacrificed at the expense of informed electorate. I read this week where information overload lowers IQ. LOL The destruction is paralleled and equal on both sides of the option. Frist has managed to push the end of the United States democracy! Guess killing cats was good experience in his line of work.

[depakid]

2. "If there were ever an example of an abuse of power, this is it,"

Ummm- has he been sleeping through the last 10 years?

Let's see- a bogus impeachment-

Failure to consult Dems or allow public debate over and overon legislation?

Keeping a floor vote open in the middle of the night for 3 1/2 hours- on a Medicare bill that they were lied to about and then having to bribe one of their own (since they couldn't find any more sell Dem outs like David Wu)?

Sounds to me like Harry Reid's just flapping his lips again- and preparing to punt away the last source of power the Dems might have....

[dbt]

4. Kick for the morning crew.

And we'll hear not a word about Clinton's 60 or so nominees who didn't get a vote. "Republicans good, Democrats baaaa-aaad" will echo through the land.

[Sentath]

8. Heard something inspiring on NPR this morning.

Actually heard the sound of a reporter selling his integrity when a sound bite from Frist saying that the Democrats were blocking 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 of *'s nominees went unchallenged.

made my throat sore yelling at the radio

'm glad I was still in the country at that point.

[colonel odis]

5. how many are required in the senate for a quorum? n/t

[NoPasaran]

9. Fifty-one

[maxrandb]

7. For Once I Agree with the Freakers!

Just pull the "effing" trigger you "ass-pickle".

The sooner they lock-down the Senate, the sooner Repukes can stop passing legislation that harms Middle Class America.

Shut the whole damn thing down! It's worthless anyway. If the little charade of the Galloway testimony is a true example of what our Senate is like, it's "effing" worthless.

And the Dems better have the backbone to make this congress move slower than molasses in winter. It's about time we actually made them read to the American people every single word of every corporate sponsored bill that comes to the floor.

This is not Government "by the people", it's government "by the money".

Might be time for a little revolution. The founders would have taken torches to the "effing" place already.

[sjdnb]

10. I found this in Johnson transcripts @ the LBJ Library

http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/oralhistory.hom/DirksenE/dirksen2.pdf

Sounds like they thought he'd be an 'activist' judge!

Dirksen: "When the President asked me, I said I certainly could support Abe Fortas on the basis of his record and what I see here now. I went back and got out the old hearings. There were fourteen members of the Judiciary Committee present."
"That's right, when we voted on the Fortas nomination and every one of them voted for him, and then when he went to the Senate that was a unanimous approval."
"If anything, of course, they resented somewhat his continuing identity as a defense counsel for some of these organizations with which he was associated. And they thought it perhaps had been overdone, and that it had been emphasized in his life and therefore it could have impaired his objectivity because you would expect a person on the high court to be completely objective no matter what the subject matter of a case that might come before them."