To me, unless a judicial candidate is wholly unqualified, there should be an up or down vote. There is some subjectivity there, but if general qualifications are met, then let the Senate vote. Be they left or right, to the victor goes the spoils and that includes deciding who sits on the courts. Senate Democrats poised to deploy “nuke option”: It’s true in physics and in politics: For every action, there’s an opposite and equal reaction. And so after Senate Republican filibustered President Obama’s nominees to sit on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals -- not on concerns about ideology or qualifications, but over the president’s ability to appoint ANYONE to these vacancies -- Senate Democrats are poised to change the rules via the so-called “nuclear option.” And while this may seem like a threat you’ve heard before, this time it seems as if there isn’t any deal that will derail this likely action. Senate Democratic aides confirm to First Read that they’re expected to vote today to change the rules to eliminate the 60-vote threshold for all executive appointments, except to the U.S. Supreme Court. Such a move requires just a 51-vote majority, so Democrats could lose four of their colleagues and still win the vote. Senate Republicans counter that if Democrats go through with this change, they’ll reciprocate the next time they control the White House and the Senate -- including for Supreme Court picks. “If [Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid] changes the rules for some judicial nominees, he is effectively changing them for all judicial nominees, including the Supreme Court,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said yesterday, per the Washington Post. But Harry Reid believes he does have 51 votes, especially since he convinced Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) to climb on board this nuke-option train. She had been an influential holdout in the past.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George...f_stalled.2C_blocked_or_filibustered_nominees The senate writes it's own rules. It doesn't require 60 votes to pass a nominee, just to vote to vote on the nominee. It takes 2/3 of congress to override a veto. Or to pass a constitutional amendment. 51 votes being a majority means squat. The Dems can go do this. The next list of blocked republican nominees will be ZERO.
and the political grid lock and scorched earth politciing continues. unfortunately this is the only way to get anything acomplished in todays toxic political environment but it just compounds the problem.
The Democrats won't do it. They know Obamacare is going to put them into the minority and they'll lose the last lever they have. All they have to do is envision this person as a Supreme Court Justice and they'll back down:
I have to laugh. When the GOP takes control of the Senate at some date in the future, the tears will flow like rain..it is going to be hard to place the blame at the feet of republicans
You're right only if the dems blanket reject all candidates as the reps have been doing. I agree with BP that negative votes should only happen if a candidate truly isn't qualified. A difference of idealogy shouldn't be the reason for a no vote.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George...f_stalled.2C_blocked_or_filibustered_nominees Soon after the inauguration of Bush as president in January 2001, many liberal academics became worried that he would begin packing the federal judiciary with conservative jurists. Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman wrote an article in the February 2001 edition of the liberal magazine The American Prospect that encouraged the use of the filibuster to stop Bush from placing any nominee on the Supreme Court during his first term.[3] In addition, law professors Cass Sunstein (University of Chicago) and Laurence Tribe (Harvard), along with Marcia Greenberger of the National Women's Law Center, counseled Senate Democrats in April 2001 "to scrutinize judicial nominees more closely than ever." Specifically, they said, "there was no obligation to confirm someone just because they are scholarly or erudite." [4] On May 9, 2001, President Bush announced his first eleven court of appeals nominees in a special White House ceremony.[5] This initial group of nominees included Roger Gregory, a Clinton recess-appointed judge to the Fourth Circuit, as a peace offering to Senate Democrats. There was, however, immediate concern expressed by Senate Democrats and liberal groups like the Alliance for Justice.[6][7] Democratic Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York said that the White House was "trying to create the most ideological bench in the history of the nation."[8] As a result, from June 2001 to January 2003, when the Senate in the 107th Congress was controlled by the Democrats, many conservative appellate nominees were stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee and never given hearings or committee votes.[9] --- "if" ?
Naw, this is getting out of hand. Appointing people to the court that will just ignore the Constitution is out of bounds and that is where we are today. Even the people that you would think will up hold the Constitution have difficulty in doing so against the wishes of Popular leaders or the willy nilly public when they take a fancy to the bill of the day tauted to correct a perceived injustice. Example ruling the Individual mandate is lawful because it is a TAX not a fine, but then it isn't a prohibited direct tax. WTF?? It is as direct as you can get, it is meant to punish and individual.
How true. We just continue to slip into the abyss of partisan politics. I wonder when it will all end.
This is scary. We know that oboma believes that the constitution is a living thing and subject to change.. now we have a quote from Reid “The Senate is a living thing, and to survive it must change, as it has over the history of this great country,” Reid said. Stack the deck in the courts..create unilateral politics to enforce agenda..hello 1930s Germany
21 minutes after the hour: 40 minutes after the hour: Maxiep, you should construct a world view that lasts longer than 19 minutes before going down in flames.