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May 19, 2005

Filibuster fight continues

From The New York Times:

The Senate today renewed its intense partisan struggle over the fate of stalled federal court nominees and the governance of the institution itself as the two parties locked in a debate over the right of a minority to prevent votes on a president's judicial candidates.

While the floor fight is ostensibly over the nomination of Justice Priscilla R. Owen of the Texas Supreme Court to a United States appeals court, the overarching question is the legitimacy of the filibuster - the Senate's singular parliamentary tactic - and the ability of Democrats to continue to use it to block President Bush's candidates for the courts.

Democrats asserted one after another today that the Republican leadership's attempt to bypass the filibuster - a procedural obstacle that requires 60 of the Senate's 100 votes to overcome - is an attempt to change two centuries of Senate tradition. To do so, said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, would be "the end of the Senate as we know it" because it would dash the protections that the Senate has always afforded lawmakers in the minority and, by extension, their constituents.

In case you need a reminder of why this is so important, click here and here for previous posts.

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Posted by Jessica at May 19, 2005 1:32 PM

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