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

[bdk3clash]

"However, [Fortas] did not have the votes in any case."

This is far from established fact, despite repeated utterances in the right wing echo chamber.

Neocons should take the following quote with a grain of salt, but according to this radical left-wing web site:

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...[President] Johnson concluded that despite filibuster warnings he just barely had the support to confirm Fortas.

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It's unclear how a vote would have gone down.

As an aside, why wouldn't Senate Republicans just have allowed a vote to take place if it was somehow self-evident Fortas wouldn't have been approved?

[bdk3clash]

My apologies--here's the link.

[jaxmike]

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"However, [Fortas] did not have the votes in any case."

This is far from established fact, despite repeated utterances in the right wing echo chamber.

Neocons should take the following quote with a grain of salt, but according to this radical left-wing web site:

[ QUOTE ]
...[President] Johnson concluded that despite filibuster warnings he just barely had the support to confirm Fortas.

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It's unclear how a vote would have gone down.

As an aside, why wouldn't Senate Republicans just have allowed a vote to take place if it was somehow self-evident Fortas wouldn't have been approved?

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I admit that I am not a scholar on this particular subject, but it seems to me that you took a quote totally out of context. In the article it seems like Johnson thought he had the votes, until the scandals broke out, at which point he lost them. Had he had another term, he might have been able to push him through, but he did not, thankfully.

[bdk3clash]

Johnson figured Fortas to have support. Then a "scandal" broke:

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...the Judiciary Committee revealed that Fortas received a privately funded stipend, equivalent to 40 percent of his Court salary, to teach an American University summer course...

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At that point, Senate Republican spokesman Everett Dirksen revoked his support for Fortas's nomination. Nonetheless, the Senate Judiciary committee recommended confirmation.

It's unclear how a Senate vote on Fortas would have turned out. Why would Senate Republicans filibuster a nominee who "did not have the votes in any case"?

I urge everyone to just read the web page themselves to ensure I didn't take anything out of context, but it's fairly clear to me that the claim that the Republicans' filibustering of Fortas somehow doesn't count is an outright lie.