Nuclear option

[jaxmike]

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Another right wing talking point that is completely erroneous.

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Sigh. No. Wrong. I point you back to his post. He did mention that ONCE before it had been. HOWEVER, in that case the nominee did not have the votes to be approved, these do.

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Republicans initiated a filibuster against a judicial nominee in 1968, forcing Democratic president Lyndon Johnson to withdraw the nomination of Associate Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas to be chief justice. Then-Sen. Robert Griffin (R-MI) recognized at the time that denying nominees a vote was already an established practice. "It is important to realize that it has not been unusual for the Senate to indicate its lack of approval for a nomination by just making sure that it never came to a vote on the merits. LINK

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Again, I agreed with the post that ONCE it had been used. However, that nominee did not have the votes in any case.

Either way, I do NOT like the idea of breaking tradition and using a filibuster on judicial nominees. HOWEVER, I do NOT like the idea of Congress simply rubber stamping ANY Presidents judical (or other) appointments. I think there SHOULD be debate about these appointments. However, filibusters (meant to FORCE debate) are in this case being used to stop it. Simple obstructionist tactics by a minority party is all this is.

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Denied, as in either held in committee, or filibustered in previous congressional sessions. Hence Ms. Owens limbo like status....

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Unfortunately, you may actually be partly right about that. It might have been that Owens did not make it out of committee in 2002, but was renominated in 2003 by Bush and has been in that state of limbo since then.

Either way, I ran across this. I found this utterly entertaining and truely frightening because I can see some of the more radical left wing people on this forum actually believing this nonsense. In the small type on this page it goes into how Owens is NOT HUMAN. Seriously. VERY funny stuff.

http://www.wiolawapress.com/apriscilla.htm