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Senate Democrats bowled over Republicans on Thursday to win approval for a highly controversial rule change which would limit the GOP's ability to block nominees. Majority Leader Harry Reid, moving quickly following days of speculation, used the so-called "nuclear option" to pass the change. Typically, major changes like this take 67 votes, but he did it with just a simple majority. With Republicans fuming, the change weakens the power of the minority to stall nominations for top positions. Instead of needing 60 votes to break a filibuster, the change means Democrats will now need just 51.

So in 2005 it was bad when GWB was in power but in 2013, its good because he is Pres. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q6aqw_SfU0&feature=youtu.be

Harry Reid is set to “go nuclear.” He wants to end the filibuster as it applies to appellate court nominations — not by a two-thirds vote of the Senate, as Senate rules require, but by a simple majority. And given the short memories now in evidence, he may just succeed. On Monday, for the third time in less than a month, Senate Republicans filibustered an Obama nominee to the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. That’s the court that’s checked the president more than once, as when it said he couldn’t make “recess appointments” when the Senate wasn’t in...

Senate Democrats eased the way for swift approval of President Barack Obama’s current and future nominees on Thursday, voting unilaterally to overturn decades of Senate precedent and undermine Republicans’ ability to block final vote. The 52-48 vote to undercut venerable filibuster rules on presidential appointees capped more than a decade of struggle in which presidents of both parties complained about delays in confirming appointees, particularly to the federal courts. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who launched the move, accused Republicans of “unbelievable, unprecedented obstruction” of Obama’s selections to fill court vacancies and other offices. “It’s time to change the Senate,...

The Senate is on the verge of striking down the long-standing filibuster rules for most presidential nominations, potentially doing so on a party-line vote that would alter nearly 225 years of precedent. Democrats, infuriated by what they see as a pattern of obstruction and delay over President Obama’s nominees, expect to trigger the showdown by bringing up one of the recent judicial nominees whom Republicans blocked by a filibuster. According to senior Democratic aides, Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) will set in motion a complicated parliamentary process that ends with a simple-majority vote setting a new rule that will...

All the action today appears to be in the Senate. They just finished voting on a motion to proceed to confirm one of Obama's nominees to the DC Court of Appeals, and it failed to get the necessary 60 votes to proceed. This is the 3rd nominee that the GOP has blocked, and Reid had threatened to go nuclear, to change the rules by a simple MAJORITY vote. Before that could happen, McConnell moved that the Senate adjourn until 5PM..a privileged motion which must be voted on. The roll call is underway.

Under the leadership of Harry Reid, and with the blessing of President Obama, Senate Democrats actually  nuked the filibuster.According to Chris Cillizza, Sean Sullivan, the issue that Reid saw as important enough to do something he said would change the U.S. Senate forever is the confirmation of three nominees to the U.S. Court of Appeals – D.C. Circuit: This time around, Democrats have pushed three nominees to the crucial D.C. circuit court, which handles most of the critical cases on interpreting federal law. The Rs say the court — which tilts toward GOP-appointed judges at the moment — doesn’t need...

President Barack Obama withdrew his nomination of Caitlin Halligan to a federal appeals court Friday, handing a victory to Republicans in the Senate who twice blocked his pick for the key judicial post. Calling the obstruction by Republicans unjustified and unacceptable, Obama said he agreed to Halligan’s request to be pulled from consideration even though she would have served with distinction on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. … Senate Republicans blocked Halligan’s confirmation for a second time in early March, arguing that Halligan is too liberal and citing her work on lawsuits against gun...

... Republican lawmakers declined Wednesday to revisit election maps they drew last year, clearing the way for a fast-track trial on Thursday that will determine which political party has an advantage in this fall's elections. A panel of three federal judges asked legislators Tuesday morning to voluntarily consider redrawing the maps, taking into account legal challenges from Democrats and Latinos. Republicans said late that day they were willing to make changes but did not believe they had the power to do so. The court rejected that argument Wednesday morning and gave them 5 1/2 hours to say whether they would...

Newt Gingrich has decided that the best way to battle the growing plague of left-wing judicial activism is to simply remove offending judges from the bench. He favors the passage of legislation which would allow Congress to eliminate federal judgeships thereby permitting the President to fill newly created voids with what in Gingrich’s view should be properly schooled jurists ready to make decisions based upon Constitutional content rather than agenda driven, personal preference. In Federalist Papers #78, Alexander Hamilton wrote that the judiciary would clearly represent the weakest branch of government with “…no influence over either the sword or the...

In a letter to the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Associate Dean and Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law Goodwin Liu, a nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, apologized for dozens of omissions from his Senate questionnaire. The “original submission of my Senate Questionnaire on February 24 inadvertently omitted a number of items,” Liu wrote to Sens. Pat Leahy, D-Vermont. “I would like to offer a sincere and personal apology to you, to the Ranking Member” – Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. – “and to the entire Committee for...

Last week two Federal Judges shows us what we’re fighting against in our battle to restore America to the Land of the Free. They ordered Washington State to allow its prison inmates, murderers rapists arsonists kidnappers and child molesters to vote from their prison cells! Apparently these two fools don’t understand the Tenth Amendment to our Constitution: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Junk justice Using gibberish about racial disparity in incarcerations that “cannot be explained in race-neutral...

Obama names four new federal judges for California Three of his four appointees to the Central and Northern U.S. District Courts in California are Asian Americans. By Carol J. Williams August 9, 2009 Fresh from his appointment of the first Latino to the U.S. Supreme Court, President Obama has named four new federal judges for California, three of them Asian Americans, who have long been underrepresented on the federal bench. Two of the appointments are to the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles, and two are to the Northern District of California in San...

California’s prisons are so overcrowded that the state is violating inmates’ constitutional rights, three federal judges ruled today in a decision imposing a cap on the prison population that will force the state to release nearly 43,000 prisoners over the next two years....The ruling by three federal judges stems from challenges by two inmates alleging that the state’s network of 33 prisons is so overcrowded that they are denied adequate health care and treatment of mental illnesses. California’s prisons, designed to hold 84,000 inmates, house 158,000, much of the overflow contained in converted sports facilities arrayed with triple-tier bunks. That...

The next possible battle in the judicial confirmation wars is set for April 1. That’s the day the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold the first confirmation hearing of the Obama administration for a nominee for the federal bench. The committee announced the hearing date today, though Republicans are asking for a delay. President Barack Obama has nominated U.S. District Court Judge David Hamilton of the Southern District of Indiana to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, based in Chicago. Unlike President George W. Bush, Obama did not announce his first appellate...

10. Land use -- Review executive orders concerning the Antiquities Act designations of lands by the government. Under Bill Clinton, millions of acres of lands were locked up by executive fiat and, because these actions were not established by law, they can be undone by executive action of a subsequent President. 9. Oil drilling -- Continue to push the Outer Continental Shelf planning process so that newly opened OCS acreage can be leased for future oil drilling. 8. Oil shale leasing -- Issue the final leasing regulations for oil shale leasing in the Western United States. Without these, the U.S....

After the Senate's long winter, there are signs of an April thaw on judges. Under pressure from Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Democratic leader Harry Reid has agreed to a plan to confirm three of President Bush's appellate court nominees by Memorial Day. The issue now is whether Mr. McConnell will let Democrats get away with confirming their favored nominees instead of those whose nominations have been pending for years. Republican Arlen Specter has the right idea in requesting a discharge petition to confirm Peter Keisler on the D.C. Circuit, plus Robert Conrad and Steve Matthews on the Fourth Circuit Court...

This is a simple question. Everyone should know the answer. It goes to the heart of the American experiment in self-government. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote that “just” government rests on “the consent of the governed.” The Constitution put that in writing, in law. But recently, two federal judges have decided that they should run America, not the people. Federal judges are, of course, not elected and serve for life. The idea that they should decide public issues rather than officials elected for that purpose is an attack on the basis of American government. And yet it...

President Bush has rebuffed a Democratic suggestion that he withdraw one of his appellate court nominations, despite the certainty that the Senate Judiciary Committee will reject the nomination. The standoff is rekindling partisan battles over judicial nominations, which died down after a group of senators struck a deal two years ago to avoid a parliamentary showdown over the issue. Now, however, with Democrats in charge of the Senate and less than two years left in his presidency, Bush has little leverage to move through the Senate nominees who face serious opposition.