LA Times editorial - Nuke It , Already

[realFedUp]

(some letters need to answer this one - [e-mail])

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-filibuster18may18,0,4593651.story?coll=la-news-comment-editorials

Nuke It, Already

May 18, 2005

We usually like it when centrist senators like John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) try to galvanize the sensible center on behalf of some compromise, but we sincerely hope they fail in their attempt to preserve the Senate's filibuster. Count this page on the side of conservative social activists who are pushing Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to "nuke" the filibuster.

We don't share these activists' enthusiasm for the White House judicial nominees triggering the current showdown. But we do believe that nominees are entitled to a vote on the floor of the Senate. The filibuster, an arcane if venerable parliamentary tactic that empowers a minority of 41 senators to block a vote, goes above and beyond those checks on majority power legitimately written into the Constitution.

The filibuster is an inherently reactionary instrument most famously used to block civil rights legislation for a generation. Democratic senators themselves decried the filibuster not long ago when they were in the majority and President Clinton's judicial nominees were being blocked.

Frist is on the verge of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. He plans to bring the nomination of Priscilla R. Owen, a Texas Supreme Court justice, before the full Senate today. Democrats have blocked her nomination in the past, and Frist is now threatening to force a change in rules to prohibit filibusters of judicial nominees. That would be a great triumph for the American people. It would be an even greater triumph if the Senate were to destroy the filibuster altogether.

continued

[still_one]

1. good la times

you will be toast after they get through with you

look what they are doing to newsweek

soon there will be no one to protect your freedom of the press, if they determine it is "against" their agenda

[Demeter]

2. Be Careful What You Wish For

These things exist for a very good reason, a reason that hasn't dissappeared in the last 225 years.

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. As regrettable as the civil rights filibuster was, might things have

not been worse if the civil rights legislation had been passed by a bare majority rather than by a filibuster-proof overwhelming majority? The anti rights legislators couldn't take a vote and declare -- as we have so many times in the past few months -- that 51% is not a mandate. When the legislation was passed with a clear 67% filibuster proof vote, that clearly is a mandate for change.

If these worst of the worst ideologically driven nominees were to pass the 67% muster, that would be, indeed, a mandate and an indication that it was time to get my passport in order. Most nominees are approved at well over 90%, including the vast majority of Bush nominees. The only reason they are pushing these clearly inappropriate nominees is to set the precedent for packing the Supreme Court with unqualified, ideologically pure justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas.

This is not about Priscilla Owen. It's all about the Supremes.

[HereSince1628]

4. Rule by simple majority is the Achilles heel of democracy n/t