Ted K's 5/18 speech - list of Rules Senate will break to nuke Fillibuster

[ibid]

http://kennedy.senate.gov/~kennedy/statements/05/05/2005518C55.html

May 18, 2005 STATEMENT BY SENATOR EDWARD M. KENNEDY ON NOMINATIONS OF PRISCILLA OWEN, WILLIAM MYERS, JANICE ROGERS BROWN, AND WILLIAM PRYOR (As Prepared for Delivery)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Laura Capps/Melissa Wagoner [phone]

<snip>Of all the qualified Republican attorneys, why chose Priscilla Owen, whose own colleagues on the conservative Texas Supreme Court say bends the law to reach a desired result?

Why pick William Pryor, who opposes rights for the disabled, voting rights, and the Family Medial Leave Act, and who contemptuously calls the Supreme Court "nine octogenarian lawyers"?

Why pick William Myers who opposes environmental protections and tried to give away valuable public lands?

And why pick Janice Rogers Brown -- who thinks senior citizens "cannibalize their grandchildren" by seeking support from society in their old age?

Neither the Constitution, nor Senate Rules, nor Senate precedents, nor American history, provide any justification for the Majority Leader's attempt to selectively nullify the use of the filibuster to push through these radical nominees. Equally important, neither the Constitution nor the Rules nor the precedents nor history provide any permissible means for a bare majority of the Senate to take that radical step without breaking or ignoring clear provisions of applicable Senate Rules and unquestioned precedents. Here are some of the rules and precedents that the executive will have to ask its allies in the Senate to break or ignore, in order to turn the Senate into a rubber stamp for nominations:

- First, they will have to see that the Vice President himself is presiding over the Senate, so that no real Senator needs to endure the embarrassment of publicly violating the Senate's rules and precedents and overriding the Senate Parliamentarian, the way our presiding officer will have to do; - Next, they will have to break Paragraph 1 of Rule V, which requires 1 day's specific written notice if a Senator intends to try to suspend or change any rule; - Then they will have to break paragraph 2 of Rule V, which provides that the Senate Rules remain in force from Congress to Congress, unless they are changed in accordance with the existing rules; - Then they will have to break paragraph 2 of Rule XXII, which requires a motion signed by 16 Senators, a two-day wait and a 3/5 vote to close debate on the nomination itself; - They will also have to break Rule XXII's requirement of a petition, a wait, and a 2/3 vote to stop debate on a Rules change; - Then, since they pretend to be proceeding on a constitutional basis, they will have to break the invariable rule of practice that constitutional issues must not be decided by the presiding officer but must be referred by the Presiding officer to the entire Senate for full debate and decision; - Throughout the process they will have to ignore, or intentionally give incorrect answers to, proper parliamentary inquiries which, if answered in good faith and in accordance with the expert advice of the parliamentarian, would make clear that they are breaking the rules; - Eventually, when their repeated rule-breaking is called into question, they will blatantly, and in dire violation of the norms and mutuality of the Senate, try to ignore the Minority Leader and other Senators who are seeking recognition to make lawful motions or pose legitimate inquiries or make proper objections.

By this time, all pretense of comity, all sense of mutual respect and fairness, all of the normal courtesies that allow the Senate to proceed expeditiously on any business at all will have been destroyed by the pre-emptive Republican nuclear strike on the Senate floor.

To accomplish their goal of using a bare majority vote to escape the rule requiring 60 votes to cut off debate, those participating in this charade will, even before the vote, already have terminated the normal functioning of the Senate. They will have broken the Senate compact of comity, and will have launched a preemptive nuclear war. The battle begins when the perpetrators openly, intentionally and repeatedly, break clear rules and precedents of the Senate, refuse to follow the advice of the Parliamentarian, and commit the unpardonable sin of refusing to recognize the minority leader.

Their hollow defenses to all these points demonstrate the weakness of their case:

They claim, "We are only breaking the rules with respect to judicial nominations; we promise not to do so on other nominations or on legislation." No one seriously believes that. Having used the nuclear option to salvage a handful of activist judges, they will not hesitate to use it to salvage some bill vital to the credit card industry, or the oil industry or the pharmaceutical industry, or Wall Street, or any other special interest. In other words, the Senate majority will always be able to get its way, and the Senate our founders created will no longer exist. It will be an echo chamber to the House, where the tyranny of the majority is so rampant today. <snip>



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[smartvoter]

1. I saw this. If they have to break the rules, how can they do it...??? nt

[ibid]

2. VP Cheney will rule no rule broken - no matter how obvious

if the media could buy up is down from Bush for 4 years, always saying how honest and credibile Bush and the GOP are, the report on the rule breaking may not even make it into the news - since all editors will agree it is "opinion that no one is interested in - story has no legs"

:-(

[BillZBubb]

3. The Parliamentarian doesn't have a police force.

He just advises on points of order. If the majority decides to ignore him, there is no way to enforce the Parliamentarian's findings. Historically, politicians had too much honor and integrity to do so. With these disgusting Repugs, honor and integrity aren't to be found.