[ECM]

I don't agree with this assessment (some of the criticisms of which, he does cite), but food for thought.

[Dan(9698)]

You have got to be kidding.

It was a direct undercutting of the Presidents authority to appoint judges.

He joined with the Democrats specifically because he didn’t like the appointments. He wanted to make the appointments himself.

That is Politics over principle.

Why would anyone vote for the synthetic when you can get the genuine in Mrs Clinton? At least you know she is going to run the country down the drain, and they will not blame Republicans.

[Invincibly Ignorant]

So the gang of 14 which got 4 judges approved as opposed to the nuclear option which would have garnered many more?
I think not.

[epow]

I don't agree with this assessment

I do.

I was so angry at the Democrats at that time for holding up those appointments that I wanted Frist to use the nuclear option on them. But now that the shoe is very likely to be on the other foot next year with a Democrat president appointing judges and Justices I'm glad that he didn't set a precedent by doing so.

Of course that doesn't guarantee that Reid won't go nuclear anyway if a Democrat president's appointments are filibustered or otherwise held up, but I can't see our wimpy Repub Senators filibustering anything. And anyway the Dems may have well over 60 Senators seated next year if the Democrats win the whole enchilada by a landslide, which appears quite possible now after Republicans are left with a gang of four liberal losers to choose our nominee from. After seeing the GOP voters rejecting every conservative candidate and embracing RINOs in every primary held so far, I don't believe the Republican's 12 year run of Congressional control that ended in '06 will resume for a long, long time, if ever.

[awake-n-angry]

It’s time for the media to make McCain a conservative. This should be good.

[srmorton]

I can see his point because we did get some good judges through the Senate as a result, but he fails to mention that there were also some very good judges who were specifically NOT included in the deal. One of them was Terence Boyle from my own state of North Carolina who would have made a wonderful judge for the 4th Circuit.

My problem with a compromise in this situation was that the Democrats were doing something that was not only blatantly unconstitutional, but also against the camaraderie that has always been characteristic of the Senate. Until Harry Reid became Senate Majority Leader, the filibuster had been reserved for legislation and was not used for judicial appointments.

I think why everyone is so upset with McCain is because he went behind both the President's and Bill Frist's backs to put together the deal that resulted in the Gang of 14. I have always felt that many of McCain's actions in the Senate were more for his own self-agrandizement than for the good of the country.