Liberals are the ones who fought to change the laws regarding filibuster in the first place. Doesn't anyone remember "Grid lock"? Now they want the rules reversed because it favors them now. Any way the wind blows when you are a political opportunist.
There's no particular reason why filibusters should be banned just for nomination votes, and there's certainly no justification for doing so in a way that violates the Senate's rules.
Maybe the reason why filibusters should be banned just for nomination votes is that the Constitution requires that the Senate advise and consent. Ignoring a nomination is unconstitutional.
The history of the filibuster is that for most (but not all) of the last two centuries it has been used in the Senate on LEGISLATION. (The House also had a tradition of unlimited debate at the beginning, when it was a small body about the size of the Senate.)
But the history of the Senate shows that regular use of the filibuster against judicial nominees is a creature of the 21st century only. For the two centuries prior to that, the Senate almost always -- in ten thousand instances -- did not apply the filibuster to judicial nominees, but instead affirmed them by majority vote only. This is the inconvenient fact that Yglesias, and other bigots like Senator Harry Reid, deliberately ignore when the speak or write on this subject.
NO ONE is suggesting ending the filibuster concerning legislation. In his pervasive dishonesty, this writer sets up and then attacks a straw man. For a much more honest appraisal of this situation, click below.
Congressman Billybob
Latest column, "Billybob's Speech for FR's March for Justice II"
What a great writer. "Washinton is abuzz..." is as dynamic a beginning as "It was a dark and stormy night..."
There is no particular reason filibusters should exist in the first place - the House of Representatives has no similar rule, and in fact, has a rule that limits any one Member of the House of Representatives to five minutes oral presentation.
The really nuclear option would be to FORCE the individual Senator or bloc of Senators to stand and deliver on the filibuster. If they have an objection, let's talk it out. If they only want to obstruct, keep them on the floor until whether through exhaustion or surrender, they finally sit down and a vote is taken.
Before they reach Hour 48, they shall have given up. Because they know that the same challenge awaits them on the next threat of filibuster.
yeah,...there's alot of "double-dare-ya,... triple-dare-ya " stuff goin' on,...stay calm and focused , nervous nellies go find something you won't F**Kup,...spaghetti legged wimps , get outta the way , this is the "heavy lifting , shoulder to the wheel" we worked for,here we go,let's roll
The Byrd Option
The former Senate leader knew how to break a filibuster.
Monday, March 7, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST
West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd got into hot water last week for introducing Hitler into the Senate's already acrimonious debate on Democratic filibusters of President Bush's judicial nominations. Speaking of the Republicans' threatened "nuclear option," he said, "We, unlike Nazi Germany or Mussolini's Italy, have never stopped being a nation of laws, not of men."
Herr Byrd does get carried away, but more revealing than his rhetoric was the substance of his remarks, on which he elaborated in an op-ed article in Friday's Washington Post. Somehow in his excoriation of a tactic that would deny Senators "their right to free speech on judicial nominations," Mr. Byrd forgot to mention that he pioneered the practice.
The "nuclear option" is the scary-sounding name for a simple Senate rule change to stop the filibuster of appeals-court nominees. Ending a filibuster requires 60 votes--rather than the simple majority of 51 that was sufficient to confirm judges for all of Senate history until this Presidency. The idea is that if the Democrats filibuster another nominee, Majority Leader Bill Frist would ask for a ruling from the Senate's presiding officer that under Rule XXII only a simple majority vote is needed to end debate on judicial nominations. Assuming 51 Members concur--and GOP nose-counters say they have the votes--the Senate would then move to an up-or-down floor vote.
Changing Senate precedents by majority vote would be nothing new to Mr. Byrd, who used the tactic to change Senate precedents on filibusters and other delaying tactics when he was Majority Leader in 1977, 1979, 1980 and 1987. This history is detailed by Martin Gold and Dimple Gupta in the current issue of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy.
The example most closely analogous occurred in March 1980, when Mr. Byrd mounted a charge to eliminate the possibility of a double filibuster--first on a motion to proceed to a nomination and then on a nomination itself. He wanted to push through the confirmation of Robert White as ambassador to El Salvador and, as Mr. Gold and Ms. Gupta explain, "this well established procedure presented potential difficulties."
And so Mr. Byrd moved to get rid of the first filibuster opportunity--debate on motions to proceed to nominations. GOP Senator Jesse Helms objected and the presiding officer ruled in Mr. Helms's favor. Mr. Byrd appealed, and the Senate voted 54-38 to overturn the chair. The rule change went into effect.
Also closely analogous to today is Mr. Byrd's threat a year earlier to deploy the nuclear option if a change he had proposed to Rule XXII was filibustered. "I want to change the rules in an orderly fashion . . ." he said. But, "if I have to be forced into a corner to try for a majority vote, I will do it because I am going to do my duty as I see my duty." In the end, the threat of going nuclear was enough to break the opposition.
Fast forward to 2005. The fight over the judicial filibuster is now coming to a head--even though GOP Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter is doing his best to delay what looks like an inevitable confrontation. Mr. Specter keeps holding out hope that Democrats don't mean what they say about filibusters, going so far as to imagine aloud last week that New York Democrat Chuck Schumer might support William Myers's nomination to the Ninth Circuit. Sorry. In the hearing last week, Mr. Schumer and other Democrats pounded Mr. Myers as a threat to civilization because he was once an industry lobbyist on environmental issues.
Other Democrats are also digging in. Most disappointing is Ken Salazar, the new Senator from Colorado, who already seems to be reneging on his campaign pledge to support a floor vote for every judicial nominee. Mr. Salazar sent a letter to Mr. Bush last week asking him to withhold certain nominations. Some liberals claim that the Republicans did the same thing to such Bill Clinton nominees as Richard Paez, but that is simply false. Mr. Paez had a long wait but he was ultimately given a floor vote and was confirmed for the Ninth Circuit. Mr. Bush's nominees aren't merely being delayed; they are being denied a vote.
It may well be that the filibuster flap will cause Democrats to raise the roof and use Senate rules to obstruct other legislation. But the alternative is for Republicans to let a Senate minority dictate who can sit on the federal bench--even after two elections in a row in which Democrats lost Senate seats in part because of the judicial filibuster issue. Elections ought to mean something. If Republicans allow a repeat of the last two years, their own voters will start to hold their timidity against them.
Meanwhile, rhetoric does matter in politics, as Herr Byrd has learned from his wacky Adolf allusions. As Republicans move to explain what they're doing to give nominees their Constitutional right to a vote on the Senate floor, we suggest they refer to the tactic as the Byrd option.
BYRD WP OP-ED: Factually inaccurate, inconsistent with his voting record
U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) had an op-ed in the Washington Post today (‘Nuking’ Free Speech, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5692-2005Mar3.html) arguing against the current Senate proposal to restore the rights of the majority and end the unprecedented filibusters against the President’s Judicial nominees. But his arguments were both factually wrong, and historically inconsistent with his own voting record.
Sen. Byrd said that restoring Senate tradition “could rob a senator of the right to speak out against an overreaching executive branch or a wrongheaded policy. It could destroy the Senate's very essence -- the constitutional privilege of free speech and debate.” But history—and Sen. Byrd’s own actions—prove otherwise.
In fact, Sen. Byrd is often credited with pioneering the Senate procedure he now derides as a denial of free speech and a threat to our liberties. Recall that it was Sen. Byrd who led the charge to establish new Senate precedents in 1977, 1979, 1980, and 1987 - including a number of precedents that were designed specifically to stop filibusters and other delay tactics that were previously authorized under Senate rules or prior precedents:
In 1977, Senator Byrd led the establishment of a new precedent in order to break a post-cloture filibuster on a natural gas deregulation bill, stating:
“I make the point of order that when the Senate is operating under cloture, the Chair is required to take the initiative under Rule XXII to rule out of order all amendments which are dilatory or which on their face are out of order." That precedent contravened prior precedent, which would have required the Chair to await a point of order from the floor.
In 1979, Senator Byrd led the establishment of a new precedent that allowed the Chair to rule on questions of germaneness raised during the consideration of appropriations bills - notwithstanding Senate Rule XVI, which states that all questions of germaneness on appropriations bills must be decided by the full Senate.
In 1980, Senator Byrd led the establishment of a new precedent to require an immediate vote, without debate, on any motion to go into executive session to consider a particular nomination. His new precedent was specifically designed, in his words, to "deal with a filibuster on the motion to proceed" to a nomination. Previously, a motion to proceed to a particular nomination was debatable. The new precedent was sustained by a vote of 54-38, and yet the precedent did not “rob a senator of the right to speak out against an overreaching executive branch,” as Sen. Byrd claimed in his op-ed.
In 1987, Senator Byrd caused establishment of a new precedent declaring that certain tactics were to be construed as dilatory during roll call votes and therefore always out of order no matter what - even though the text of the Senate rules had clearly authorized such tactics. Previously, dilatory tactics were out of order only after cloture had been invoked.
And in 1975, the Senate voted three times (51-42, 48-40, and 46-43) in support of the power of a Senate majority under Article I to change the rules. Those precedents forced the Senate to act and led to a major change in the cloture rule.
The Constitution and the U.S. Supreme Court:
* Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution clearly states that "[e]ach House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings."
* The U.S. Supreme Court has unanimously held that, unless the Constitution expressly provides for a supermajority vote, the constitutional rule is majority vote. [See United States v. Ballin (1892).]
As Sen. Byrd must surely know after decades in the Senate, a majority of Senators has also always possessed the constitutional power to establish new Senate precedents - including precedents that reverse prior precedents, and precedents that contravene the text of the standing rules of the Senate. And I think he was very clear in 1979 when he claimed exactly the opposite of what he averred in today’s op-ed:
“This Congress is not obliged to be bound by the dead hand of the past. . . . . The first Senate, which met in 1789, approved 19 rules by a majority vote. Those rules have been changed from time to time.... So the Members of the Senate who met in 1789 and approved that first body of rules did not for one moment think, or believe, or pretend, that all succeeding Senates would be bound by that Senate. . . . It would be just as reasonable to say that one Congress can pass a law providing that all future laws have to be passed by two-thirds vote. Any Member of this body knows that the next Congress would not heed that law and would proceed to change it and would vote repeal of it by majority vote.”
--U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd, Jan. 15, 1979
Sen. Byrd also claimed in the second graf that “President Bush has renominated 20 men and women to the federal bench, seven of whom the Senate rejected last year.” That charge, though, is simply inaccurate. NONE of President Bush’s judicial nominees have “been turned down in the Senate.” None. The nominees were denied a vote altogether—despite the fact that they all had (and have) bipartisan majority support. ALL would be confirmed if a partisan minority of the Senate would allow an up-or-down vote.