http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_042903/content/stack_c.guest.html An Interesting Judge Strategery
April 29, 2003
The Democrats disregard the Electoral College and say: Bush didn't win the popular vote, so he can't appoint a single judge. Senate Republicans are "tired" of fighting for Bush nominees like Miguel Estrada and Priscilla Owen. Robert Novak reported that they want to give up, just as Ted Kennedy predicted they would when he came up with this strategy.
If I were in charge of the Senate GOP, I'd tell Mr. Bush to start filling the bench with recess appointments. The president can make such appointments when Congress is out of session, and he should do so - not just with Estrada and Owens, but with guys liberals fear like Robert Bork! That's right: Let's Bork Again! These Democrats rewrote the Constitution. It says a president needs 50 votes to confirm a judge, but they raised the threshold to 60 - the number needed to break a filibuster. So Bush should make tons of recess appointments, and promise to stop them only when Democrats give his nominees the fair, up-or-down floor vote the Constitution of the United States requires.
Just imagine Judge Bork getting recess-appointed to the D.C. Court of Appeals - where he has previously served - for a temporary period! He'd sit there until the next Congress convenes, and it would drive Tom Daschle and Ted Kennedy off a bridge. They're obsessed with getting activist judges who encroach on the legislature's power to write laws on the bench, and keeping Bush judges who interpret the law off the bench. They know that the liberal agenda can't win at the ballot box, so they're packing the court with Clinton's appointments as they shut out Bush's.
No, folks, you can't say, "The Republicans did the same thing." They did no such thing. Senator John Kyl of Arizona put out the following in a March 2, 2003 statement: "While over 90% of Reagan, Bush I and Clinton circuit court nominees were confirmed in their first two years in office, less than half of President Bush’s original circuit court nominations have even had an up or down vote in the Senate. Some have waited nearly two years for even a hearing. If the Democrats succeed with this filibuster – which requires 60 votes to break - they will have effectively changed the rules that have governed our country since its founding." There is an answer: recess appointments.
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_042903/content/stack_c.guest.html
I would love to see a rush of recess appointments. The GOP has to win this battle one way or the other.