[Paul Atreides]

"I have told these three ladies I will stand with them to the bitter end because they're the absolute right pick for their respective positions," Bush told reporters in the Oval Office

Isn't it great that we have a president who can make such a statement, without inspiring a case of the giggles?

[Common Tator]

The talkathon had very little to do with getting democrats to change their votes. That is not going to happen.

This is about changing votes in senate elections in 2004.

If a few more votes of hispanics, blacks, and women can be pried away from the Democrats on this issue, it may be possible to pick up 5 or 6 seats in the senat in 2004.

If the pubies in the 2004 election can get to 55 or 56 seats they can threaten and bribe 5 or so demorat votes to override any filibuster.

There is no way a Democrat will change his vote before the election. But if 5 or 6 Democratic senators that helped defeat cloture are defeated at the polls next year, several of the surviving Demorats will fold and allow a vote. But if the PUbies can get 55 or 56 Republicans in the senate, they can bribe 4 or 5 DINOs to get anything they want.

That is what the 39 hours was about.

[caisson71]

Why only 30 hours? Why not 40, 50 or 60 hours, however long it takes. It would seem to me that if the Republicans want to pick a fight, they should be prepared to win!!

[Redleg Duke]

The RATS continue to hold a pistol to their heads, screaming..."Don't laugh, you all are next!"

As Napoleon once said, "Never distract your enemy when he is busy making a mistake!"

[My2Cents]

It really frosts me that Putzy Schumer and the other extreme leftists in the Democrat Party can say with a straight face that they know better than anyone else what constitutes the "mainstream" of America.

[Prime Choice]

So much for the "Frists of Fury"...

I am so NOT surprised. Thanks to the Senate pubbies for handing the Democrats a victory when they should be demoralized!

[winker]

Turnabout is fair play, if the conservatives will insist on returning the favor when the time presents itsself. This points up once again how critical the Congressional elections are in this country. The presidential elections are nothing but a cheap beauty contest. The only way to give liberals hell is to win the senate and house seats decisively. The closeness of the last elections is something we need to avoid by winning big in those races.

[nightdriver]

Why doesn't Frist simply say: "OK, if it's filibuster the democRATs want, it's filibuster they will have." Then force them to start talking. When they quit talking, filibuster is over, quorum is called and vote taken.

I don't see why 40% has to have such a hold on senate business. What am I missing?

[nutmeg]

read later bump

[nothingnew]

Democrats countered this was just business as usual and argued Republicans used filibusters to block far more of President Clinton's judicial nominations.

As far I know, this is another lie. Didn't these judges lose on an up/down vote allowed by the pubs?...Please correct me if I'm misinformed.

FMCDH

[bvw]

A "victory" that marks the final stage of the Democratic Party ... they have tied themselves to the tracks and the Zeitgeist Zephyr is bearing down on them.

Can Howard Dean rescue them in time?

[Rummyfan]

Here's an old Ann Coulter column which shows the kind of 'moderate' the Democrats want in the judiciary:

Ann Coulter 10 May 2001

'Centrist' In Liberal-Speak

The New York Times has demanded that Senate Democrats block Bush's "judicial ideologues," whom, the Times predicts, will compare unfavorably to "Clinton's centrist judicial choices."

As one Clinton "centrist" nominee said to a female prosecutor appearing in her courtroom: "Shut your f***ing mouth." Another lawyer received this admonition from the centrist judge: "I don't give a s**t." That was the criminal's messiah: Judge Frederica A. Massiah-Jackson of the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court.

One time, Massiah-Jackson betrayed the identity of two undercover officers in her courtroom, announcing to the assembled criminals -- "take a good look at these guys ... and be careful out there."

When asked about this episode by a stunned Senate Judiciary Committee, Massiah-Jackson first said she did not recall the incident, twice refused to comment, once categorically denied it (despite contemporaneous news accounts), and finally gave a cockamamy account of having been misunderstood.

Only after the undercover officers had submitted statements to the committee describing how Massiah-Jackson had flamboyantly exposed them in open court did the judge begin to recall the incident with greater clarity. In "reconstructing the incident," she said she had been instructing school children present in the courtroom to respect police officers.

The story didn't really hang together because, on account of being undercover and all, undercover officers would not be identifiable to schoolchildren as police officers.

Be that as it may, it turned out Massiah-Jackson had already stated on the record that she was talking to criminal defendants, not any alleged school children in the courtroom. At a later hearing, the D.A. had raised the incident with Massiah-Jackson, and she cavalierly dismissed the D.A.'s outrage, saying: "I do say that to certain defendants."

In another classic Massiah-Jackson moment, Commonwealth vs. Johnson, the judge sentenced the brutal rapist of a 10-year-old girl to the statutory minimum. She apologized to the rapist for even that much time: "I just don't think the five to 10 years is appropriate in this case even assuming you were found guilty." She refused the D.A.'s offer to present a pre-sentence report and victim-impact statement, saying: "What would be the point of that?" (The five-year sentence was not crippling. After his release, the defendant was re-arrested for raping a 9-year-old boy.)

In another special moment for the whole Rainbow Coalition, when Massiah-Jackson was informed that both the defendant and victim in a rape case had AIDS, she said: "Why are we having a trial? We are talking about life expectancy of three years for both of them. What difference? What kind of punishment can we give (the defendant)? ... What's the purpose of the trial long range?"

In light of the fact that Massiah-Jackson had just announced there was no purpose in trying the defendant, the prosecutor requested that the judge recuse herself. She refused, and the victim died while the recusal motion was on appeal. The trial proceeded before Massiah-Jackson, who sentenced the defendant to one year of probation, allowing him to serve no time for a vicious rape and beating. ("What's the purpose?")

Sentencing a defendant who had slashed a woman in the face with a straight razor while stealing her purse, Massiah-Jackson refused to apply a sentence enhancement for use of a deadly weapon. When the D.A. noted that the enhancement was required, the centrist judge accused her of being "vindictive." Massiah-Jackson was reversed on appeal for ignoring the enhancement.

Indeed, Massiah-Jackson was reversed in a number of criminal cases. But in response to the Judiciary Committee request that she provide a list of her reversals -- a pro forma request -- she repeatedly claimed she had not been reversed in a single criminal case.

After having been caught in this and other lies, "centrist" Massiah-Jackson decided to withdraw her nomination. The New York Times was in a high dudgeon. Not because Massiah-Jackson had sneered at AIDS victims and rape victims, shouted obscenities from the bench or outed undercover cops, but because of the "judicial mugging" the Senate had put her through. The judge at least would return to the state bench "with her honor intact," the Times editorialized. "Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the Senate."

Indeed, even after all this came out about Massiah-Jackson (despite the encumbrance of the judge's tendency to lie), she was avidly supported for a life-tenured federal judgeship by: The New York Times, top Philadelphia law firms, judges, Philadelphia Mayor Edward G. Rendell, the NAACP, the Barristers' Association of Philadelphia Inc., the Hispanic Bar Association, the Asian American Bar Association of the Delaware Valley and -- surprise -- the Philadelphia Bar Association.

When Bush's judicial nominees come under attack from the same groups for failing to be duly "centrist," remember what they mean by that.

[Intolerant in NJ]

The Constitution says only that the Senate should advise and consent to nominees - it says nothing about actively undertaking to defeat them in any way other than by refusing to consent - i.e. to vote for them - the 'rats' filibuster should simply be declared out of order and an up-or-down vote initiated on each nominee....