Republicans Don't Like the Rules ? Let's Change Em !
Note to Local Talk Radio Talking Heads......It's understandable that you would withhold this information from your listeners so as to spin them into thinking that President Bush's Judicial Nominees are hardly ever approved. How about a 90 to 95% approval rate ! I accuse you of "dumbing down" your audience members...............
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GOP May Target Use of Filibuster
Senate Democrats Want To Retain the Right to Block Judicial Nominees
By Helen Dewar and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, December 13, 2004; Page A01
As speculation mounts that Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist will step down from the Supreme Court soon because of thyroid cancer, Senate Republican leaders are preparing for a showdown to keep Democrats from blocking President Bush's judicial nominations, including a replacement for Rehnquist.
Republicans say that Democrats have abused the filibuster by blocking 10 of the president's 229 judicial nominees in his first term -- although confirmation of Bush nominees exceeds in most cases the first-term experience of presidents dating to Ronald Reagan. Describing the filibusters as intolerable, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has hinted he may resort to an unusual parliamentary maneuver, dubbed the "nuclear option," to thwart such filibusters.
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Bush's Judicial Nominations Are Hardly Mainstream
February 17, 2005
President Bush has re-nominated seven candidates for the federal appeals courts. Each was blocked by Senate Democrats during his first term. He also sent back to the Senate five other nominees for the federal appeals courts whose confirmations were slowed because of Democratic concerns regarding their legal backgrounds. Bush has accused Democrats of blocking votes on so many of his nominations that they have created "judicial emergencies."
In reality, Bush has had more judicial nominees approved than was the case in the first terms of Presidents Clinton and Reagan, and the administration of his father. Of the 214 nominees sent to the Senate for a vote during his first term , Democrats blocked only ten, using the filibuster. As such, 95 percent of Bush's nominees have been approved. By contrast, from 1995 to 2000, the Republican Senate blocked 35% of Clinton's circuit court nominees. Bush has repeatedly said that all of his nominees are well qualified to serve on the nation's courts. He has said, "They are of the highest caliber. These are superb nominees." And he has stressed that "they represent mainstream values." However, a review of his nominees indicates that most of them could hardly be construed as holding mainstream legal and public policy ideas.
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