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You gotta love this. For months we've been reading about how Democrats have been blocking Bush's judicial nominations via filibuster.
The Senate Rules Committee just met and changed the rules so as to limit those filibusters. It so happened that no Democratic members of the Committee showed up for the meeting.
"It's hard to get people to a meeting between 9:30 and 10," Lott said. "We got ours here. The others were going to come but didn't get here by the time we finished our work."
The whole article is here - but Rush has the right take on it.
The Constitution sets out that the president nominates judges and the Senate evaluates them in a simple majority vote - 51 votes - based on the candidate's judicial qualifications, not on their political views. Yet a few extreme Democrats have set out to block President Bush's judicial candidates who have the votes to win confirmation in the full Senate. They do this by filibustering.
Since you need 60 votes to break a filibuster, Democrats have now required far more votes to confirm judges than the Constitution itself does! Well, if the Democrats can illegally amend the Constitution's provision on how many votes are needed to confirm a judge, then the Republican Party can and should do all it can to set things right. Shockingly, the GOP Senate has done just that.
The Associated Press: "A Senate committee with all its Democratic members absent voted to limit filibusters of President Bush's judicial nominees Tuesday, a move Republicans hope will usher future federal judges through the Senate faster, even if Democrats want to stop them." Good job, guys. Way to uphold and defend the Constitution.
Fantastic.
#1
The constitution also requires that the legislative branch create the laws. Currently the judicial branch is also taking on this responsibility. This increase the power of judges and raises the stakes of any higher court nominations. Purhaps the House and Senate could correct this problem also?