DescentBB

With the Republicans currently in complete control: they are trying to push for two major reforms, the first is to reform the judicial branch of the government: making them stronger.(This first one is still in the rallying phase, which is why I think Republicans made such a deal out of Terri). The second, is trying to end the fillibuster: making them stronger.

First:

We will look at an arrogant, out of control, unaccountable judiciary that thumbed their nose at the Congress and president when given jurisdiction to hear this case anew and look at all the facts....The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior, but not today."
-S. House of Representatives Majority Leader Tom DeLay

link

Second:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., has threatened to invoke the so-called "nuclear option" this month that would have the effect of undoing the 200-year-old Senate filibuster practice.

If Frist succeeds, the votes of just 50 senators and the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Dick Cheney would be enough to cut off debate...under current rules, the votes of 60 or more senators are required to end a filibuster and bring debate to a close

link

No matter what team you belong to, I hope most of us would agree that these are not good: and could very well bite Republicans in the ass in the next election. Despite my belief that Shiavo should live: I am glad that in that case a mere judge, whom got the case randomly, had more power then even the president of the United States. It shows we don't have a king! It's a good thing to not have simple majority always rule in the senate. It makes the "will of the people," more obvious.

If democrates were in control of all 3, and were trying to do these things, I would be just as critical.

Gooberman wrote:the first is to reform the judicial branch of the government: making them stronger.

All I want is a judicial branch that does its job. Whoever is in power needs to reform it, and whoever is out of power needs to be involved in the process so that the in-power side doesn't overstep its bounds.

This is something the Democrats should get in on -- make it a bi-partisan reform of the judicial branch, and don't let either party seize undeserved power. I don't think the Dems will do it, though -- because their policies have benefitted the most, recently, from the current judiciary, and especially from things the judiciary has done that it shouldn't have. If they're smart, they'll get involved with reform *anyway* (even though they'll lose out) in order to cut their losses in future elections.

I don't like how either party is handling this... but I think the Republicans will come out of it better (in election terms), simply because the judiciary has pulled some crazy stuff recently, and the people haven't been happy with it.

The second, is trying to end the fillibuster: making them stronger.

They're not trying to end the filibuster. They're trying to end judicial filibusters. The filibuster is all well and good when you're trying to hold off a bad law, but judicial nominees deserve a straight up vote. They've been given straight-up votes throughout US history, until the last 4 years when the Democratic party decided to misuse the filibuster.

This actually already bit Democrats in the a** last election (see: Tom Daschle). Luckily, I think there are at least 5 Democrats smart enough to see that continued obstruction will only cost them more elections in the future, so the Republicans won't have to invoke the nuclear option.

How would you reform the judicial branch? Where is it not doing its Job? The Terri Shiavo judge got alot of flack: but he did exactly what he was suppose to. If the law was written to give the parents say, there is no doubt that he would have given it to them. He interpreted the law as it was written, what people were really upset about was how it was written! This Judge is a conservative Baptist judge, who took a lot of flack precisely for doing his job.

Or the gay rights issue. It's frustrating that on an issue so minor Conservatives would reform the entire judicial branch of the government. What a horrid mark of bigtry. Even here, the Judges are still doing their job: you just donâ??t agree with it. Many didn't agree with civil rights, in fact the majority didn't support brown vs board of education. Gay rights isn't of the same magnitude as civil rights, but its ridiculous how conservatives want to reform the judicial branch for imposing policies that don't even affect them at all. If two gays get married there will be absolutely no change in your life. So I would hardly call this out of control...

What are the other examples of Judges not doing their job?

The whole purpose of the fillibuster is to protect the rights of the minority and promote compromise. Do you agree? If there is anything that deserves compromise its judicial nominees. Federial Judges serve lifetime terms; how could you argue that a 3/5 ratio is unreasonable? What seperates this issue in your eyes from other bad laws that you would argue deserves a filibuster? How are they different?

For a position that serves a lifetime term, we should be encouraging more compromise, not less. Seriously, all we are asking that they get through the senate with a "D".

Judges are suppose to be free of partisanship, if they can't get 60%: then they arn't.

Gooberman, judges are supposed to get a straight up or down vote of a simple majority. That's the way the system was always set up to work. The Dem's have used the filibuster to prevent a vote from happening.
that is not the way the system was set up to work, it's a loophole that should be closed.

The primary reason for the filibuster is always to prevent votes from happening! Again, all the questions I asked Lothar come into play, specifically, "why not here.?"

It is no secret that Bush is a statement maker with nominations, he nominated a guy to the U.N who is on record as saying,

"If the U.N. secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference...."

"There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world and that is the United States when it suits our interest and we can get others to go along."

"It is a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international law even when it may seem in our short-term interest to do soâ??because, over the long term, the goal of those who think that international law really means anything are those who want to constrain the United States."

-John Bolton

Seriously....60% for a lifetime term is reasonable....

If the fillibuster is missused, it will cost the dems votes. This is preciesly how it should work.

Gooberman wrote:...This is preciesly how it should work.

But it's not how it was designed to work. You may be right but then let the dem's introduce a new piece of legislation that makes the super majority requirement a law...and let them face the possibility of losing the vote or even a filibuster. Why don't they do that?
That's the way "it should work" according to the guys who set up the rules.

The 'nuclear' option is just using the system to get things back to where they are supposed to be. Certainly not as extreme as the dem's using a filibuster where it wasn't intended to be used.

I think the repub's will hold off and use the 'nuclear' option on the Supreme Court appointments that are looming.

Where is it not doing its Job?

1) Creating new laws about gay marriage and refusing to allow the people to actually bring such laws to a vote. Courts are there to interpret what the laws were supposed to mean -- to understand the lawmakers intent -- and to determine whether or not a law is constitutionally valid. The "gay marriage" interpretation clearly was NOT the lawmakers intent. The Mass. Supreme court could find that the written law is unconstitutional, or they could uphold it, but it's not their job to change what it means without the consent of the people. You claim the judges are "just doing their job", but you're just plain wrong. If they were "just doing their job" they'd evaluate the current law and let the legislature or the people create a replacement law.

2) Failure to do a de novo review in the Schiavo case, when the legislature passed a law that called for one. (A de novo review means evaluating the whole case from scratch -- re-evaluating all of the evidence, as a whole.) Instead, the court decided only to review whether or not the prior courts broke any laws in making their ruling. They ignored the law that said they had to do a de novo review, because they didn't like the way the law was written. They did exactly what you're accusing me and the Republican party of!

What a horrid mark of bigtry.

Thanks for being so kind and understanding that you would call me and those on my side "bigots" over our disagreement with judges intentionally misinterpreting laws in order to enact their own agendas. That really helps your credibility. (As for the stuff you tried to argue specifically about gay "rights", that's not what this thread is about. But perhaps you can argue with Jane Galt about it. At the very least, read what James R. Rummell has to say about your loaded rhetoric.)

The whole purpose of the fillibuster is to protect the rights of the minority and promote compromise.

It's to protect the rights of the minority and promote compromise in legislation.

If there is anything that deserves compromise its judicial nominees.

Judicial nominees are not legislation. You can't send a judge back for a partial rewrite.

When you're holding up legislation, that's perfectly reasonable. But when you're holding up an individual judge's life because you don't want him to get his 53% of the vote, that's just plain wrong. There's a reason why it's never been done before. As a recent WSJ editorial said, "[f]or more than 200 years, however, [Senate] has interpreted the Founders' injunction [of "advise and consent"] to mean that a simple majority of Senators--51 in our age--must vote to confirm."

Federial Judges serve lifetime terms; how could you argue that a 3/5 ratio is unreasonable?

Because the Senate, for 200 years, has given every judicial nominee a vote until the 10 nominees the Dems filibustered last term. It might not be unreasonable, but if people want the ability to filibuster nominees, they should do as Will suggested and introduce a nominee-filibuster law. Don't just change the process because you feel like it; if you want filibusters to be used this way, put it to a vote and establish that it can be done in every future administration, or else let the vote fail and establish that it shouldn't be done.

Judges are suppose to be free of partisanship

Judges are supposed to uphold the law. I see nothing that says they should or shouldn't be partisan.

[Bush] nominated a guy to the U.N who is on record as saying

"If the U.N. secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference...."

Yes, I know. And he's right (but don't give me that "invoking images of 9/11" crap people try to pull on that quote.) If you got rid of 10 stories worth of the UN, you wouldn't be missing much. But, again, this isn't a thread on the UN, it's a thread on judicial nominees.

You do a good job of muddying the waters... let's talk about judicial filibusters! OK, here's a couple paragraphs on gay marriage. But wait, we're talking about judicial filibusters! OK, here's an anti-UN quote from a nominee to the UN! In a thread you started, even, so you can't claim to have misread the title.

Please... make up your mind what we're talking about. Changing topics all willy-nilly is the oldest trick in the book. All it really does it makes it impossible to complete the discussion of any one topic. Are we talking about judicial filibusters and judicial reform, or are we talking about Schiavo, or gay rights, or the UN?

Thanks guys. This is an important topic, and interesting discussion; but as everyone takes a moment for a breather

[spoiler]I'd like to suggest that bluberry pie is tasty!
(sorry to horn in on your idea, JMeat)[/spoiler]

There, now carry on folk ...

You GOP beaters tend to have very short memories. The GOP did the exact same thing, they just tweaked it a bit. They had majority in Congress so they didn't have to filibuster, but they tied up all the hearings.


"All this changed in 1996. Rather than openly challenge President Clinton's nominees on the floor, Republicans decided to deny them Senate Judiciary Committee hearings. Between 1996 and 2000, 20 of Bill Clinton's appeals-court nominees were denied hearings, including Elena Kagan, now dean of the Harvard Law School, and many other women and minorities. In 1999, Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch refused to hold hearings for almost six months on any of 16 circuit-court and 31 district-court nominations Clinton had sent up. Three appeals-court nominees who did manage to obtain a hearing in Clinton's second term were denied a committee vote, including Allen R. Snyder, a distinguished Washington lawyer, Clinton White House aide, and former Rehnquist law clerk, who drew lavish praise at his hearing -- but never got a committee vote. Some 45 district-court nominees were also denied hearings, and two more were afforded hearings but not a committee vote."

http://election.cbsnews.com/stories/200 ... 3182.shtml

They didn't have to use the filibuster because they had majority on it.

Your big boy Bill Frist, he's been on the war path for the end of the equality.

"In 1996 Clinton nominated Judge Richard Paez to the 9th Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals. Conservatives in Congress held up Paez's nomination for more than four years, culminating in an attempted filibuster on March 8, 2000. Bill Frist was among those who voted to filibuster Paez. [2]

Frist was directly confronted with this vote by Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation (11/21/04). Schieffer said "Senator, a group called The American Progress Action Fund sent me a question to ask you. And here's what it says: 'Senator Frist, if you oppose the use of the filibuster for judicial nominations, why did you vote to filibuster Judge Richard Paez when President Clinton nominated him to the 9th Circuit?'" [3] Frist replied "Filibuster, cloture, it gets confusing--as a scheduling or to get more information is legitimate. But no to kill nominees."

But American Progress has obtained a document that proves Frist was not, as he suggested, voting to filibuster Paez for scheduling purposes or to get more information. He voted to filibuster Paez for the very reason he said was illegitimate â?? to block Paez's nomination indefinitely.

On March 9, 2000, Former Senator Bob Smith (R-NH) issued a press release describing the intent of the Paez filibuster vote the day before. The release says Senator Smith "built a coalition of several moderate and conservative Senators in an effort to block" Paez's nomination. [4] Frist was a part of that coalition. Smith did not organize the filibuster to get more information on Paez (after all his nomination had been pending for four years). He organized the filibuster because he had already decided Paez was "out of the mainstream of political though and...should [not] be on the court" [Click here to read Smith's press release]."

Sorry, I tested the link and it keeps coming up error, if you don't believe me and want the link, I'll find it for you

You GOP beaters tend to have very short memories.

Would you have remembered what was in that article if you hadn't read it? ;)

Zuruck wrote:The GOP did the exact same thing, they just tweaked it a bit.

If they did the exact same thing, they deserve the exact same criticism. But how much is hidden under the language of "just tweaked it a bit"? (In Descent terms, a "small tweak" can go anywhere from a custom ship skin to an invuln hack. Yet we judge these "small tweaks" quite differently...)

Rather than openly challenge President Clinton's nominees on the floor, Republicans decided to deny them Senate Judiciary Committee hearings.... Three appeals-court nominees who did manage to obtain a hearing in Clinton's second term were denied a committee vote

It seems like the main difference between this and the current situation is that, here, they were taking people who would've been voted down and stopping them earlier in the process -- which is something that's been happening as long as there's been a senate. Like you said, they had the majority; they could've voted these people down, but choose to stop them earlier in the process (probably to save face -- less publicity if they vote them down in committee than if they vote them down in the full senate.) In the current situation, they're taking people who would probably pass the vote, and stopping them moments from the actual vote, which is what I have a problem with.

Granted, I'm not an expert on senate procedure... but being stopped in committee seems quite a bit different from being filibustered on the senate floor. I'd imagine every senate throughout history has dropped a number of nominees long before they got to the senate floor, but this has been the first senate that's stopped them after they've passed all the committees.

Conservatives in Congress held up Paez's nomination for more than four years, culminating in an attempted filibuster on March 8, 2000. Bill Frist was among those who voted to filibuster Paez.... Senator Smith "built a coalition of several moderate and conservative Senators in an effort to block" Paez's nomination.

If he did that, he deserves the exact same criticism. If he attempted, but failed, to do what Democrats are doing now, the same criticism applies to him.

If someone gets all the way through committee, they should get a vote, plain and simple.

The last time a party tried to lower the cloture requirements that cause filibusters to end and result in a vote it was the Dems in 1995 (when they held a majority). Nothing new under the political sun.

Personally I don't see the number of cloture votes dropping from 60 to 51 because the Republicans know that what goes around comes around. Dropping the vote to a simple majority will be taking away the power of the filibuster from them as well as the Dems. Unless the Republicans are naive enough to believe their majority will remain forever, the knife cuts both ways. I don't predict they will do that.

Making the threat to lower cloture is designed to publicize the intransigence of the Dems in the hope that it will hurt them at the polls by showing the public that they aren't playing nice when it comes to judicial nominations, or at a minimum, to worry the Dems that it will hurt them at the polls so they will abandon or ease back on their overuse of the filibuster.

The filibuster itself is supposed to be a strategy of last resort, a *nuclear option*, used only in the most dire of circumstances to block a nomination. The Dems are using it far too often and I hope a few more go the way of Daschle before they smarten up and realize grinding this part of our democracy to a halt for purely partisan reasons (and because they can) will come back to haunt them, either at the polls or when (if?) they regain a majority and the Republicans pay them back in kind and filibuster every Dem nomination.

Courts are there to interpret what the laws were supposed to mean -- to understand the lawmakers intent --

In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision that the "separate but equal" clause was unconstitutional because it violated 14 amendment rights.

Now do you honestly believe that those "lawmakers" who wrote the 14th amendment intended that this law allow their children to go to the same school as black children? Of course not. But it was a natural logical consequence of a law that was intended to promote a fair society.

Failure to do a de novo review in the Schiavo case, when the legislature passed a law that called for one. (A de novo review means evaluating the whole case from scratch -- re-evaluating all of the evidence, as a whole.)

There are many different ways I can respond, but once again I would first like to ask â??what would you change?â?

The GOP didn't have to filibuster because they controlled the commitees. They just delayed the vote and buried the hearings. So the Dems are doing the only one thing they can do to stop the system. Is is the best of things? Probably not, but considering that around 215 judges have been cleared and that only 10 are being held up, I think I will let the Dems continue to do this and not get upset. This is the only way the minority has any say in the issue, and I think it's good to let them do it.

"Because the Senate, for 200 years, has given every judicial nominee a vote until the 10 nominees the Dems filibustered last term. It might not be unreasonable, but if people want the ability to filibuster nominees"

Hopefully, my post answered that question. You can get around the filibuster, as the GOP did during Clinton's term.

Zuruck wrote:The GOP didn't have to filibuster because they controlled the commitees. They just delayed the vote and buried the hearings.

I think the difference is the republicans had the votes to stop it if a vote took place so they just said no, why bother. Why go on the record voting no to a minority appointment if you don't have to. Let the blame lie at the feet of a committee not your self, that way they can't bring it up to the minority voters in your district that you "voted no to minority X" during your next re-election campaign.

In the case of Bush's appointments a polling of the congress shows the votes are there to pass the nominations so the Dem's are using a loop hole to keep the votes from being tallied.

Seems like you just made my point for me Will. GOP is crying foul about the Democrats and they are just doing what they can to keep those judges off the bench. The GOP did what they had to do to keep who they wanted off, and so do the Dems. You see the GOP in no wrong and the Dems wrong, I see them both wrong but both doing what they had to do to get what they want. No problem for me, on both sides.

Zuruck wrote:You see the GOP in no wrong and the Dems wrong, I see them both wrong but both doing what they had to do to get what they want. No problem for me, on both sides.

No I see them both using the system. I just see it as wrong for Dem's to complain when the Repubs use the system to close the loophole.

But in the big picture, yea, I see them both as wrong because they all just suck so much. I bet the founding fathers would shoot them all if they could.

Will Robinson wrote:But in the big picture, yea, I see them both as wrong because they all just suck so much. I bet the founding fathers would shoot them all if they could.

Hehe, I could just see Washington's 6'3" frame rising from the grave to kick some bureaucratic ass.

Ok, I'm going to shift just a bit here since we're talking about changing rules. What do you think about Tom DeLay? I don't know if he's guilty of all that crap they're pinning on him, but what I don't like is that when the ethics commitee (Repubs included) decided to slap his wrist, Hastert had those GOP'ers removed from the panel and had the rules changed. I don't like how people want to change rules so quick because they don't like the results their getting. It's been done before in various ways, the Dems are doing it now. If the Dems were ok with 210 of Bush's picks...maybe they have a point about holding up these 10.