Category: Politics (2005-2006)

Nuclear Escalation.

Priscilla Owen may be through, but a number of papers note today how Monday’s compromise only sets the stage for an ugly battle over Dubya’s next Supreme Court pick, likely to be a conservative freakshow.

Harnessing Nuclear Power.

I already posted one of these in the comments yesterday, but in case you missed it: Salon and the major papers break down the impact of nuclear detente on the 2008 GOP primaries. I’m dismayed to hear purported maverick Chuck Hagel attack the compromise — between this transparent kowtowing to primary-voting fundies and his Yes vote for John Bolton, the Senator of Nebraska is seeming less and less worthy of moderate support.

Stems and Thorns.

With the nuclear detente and Priscilla Owen now on her way to a judgeship, congressional attention turns to stem cell research. With the right-wing fundies already on the warpath over the loss of GOP nukes, how will they respond in the unlikely event of Dubya’s threatened veto getting overridden?

The Eleventh Hour.

On the eve of meltdown, the Senate center holds, producing a compromise that allows three Dubya judges — Priscilla Owen, Janice Brown, and William Pryor — through in return for a nuclear standdown. The Dems are heralding this as a victory, but, with Rehnquist in ill health, this may just postpone the conflict…

Eve of Destruction.

As Frist’s press secretary gets tang-tungled trying in vain to explain her boss’s support for a 2000 judicial filibuster, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), one of Catkiller‘s stooges (who also blamed courthouse violence on activist judges a few weeks ago), sets the nuclear gambit in motion with a call for cloture. This will come to a head Tuesday, unless the moderates can avert the cataclysm. “Throughout the past three days of debate, Democratic senators pointed repeatedly to the Senate’s approval of 208 of Bush’s judicial nominees. Instead of being satisfied with a 95 percent success rate, the highest for a president’s judicial nominees in the past two decades, Bush has shown that he wants to have everything his way, the Democrats charged. By comparison, Republicans blocked 69 of President Clinton’s judicial nominees during his two terms.”

Nuclear Chess.

As Frist’s nuclear countdown ticks off, Senate moderates attempt a compromise, Senate aides hone their maneuvering, and Senate freakshow Rick Santorum (R-PA) invokes Godwin’s Law in claiming that Dems were “the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 saying, ‘I’m in Paris. How dare you invade me?’” (C-SPAN link via Quiddity.)

Star Wars: Episode I.

Eager to try out new experimental weapons systems with dubious names like “Rods from God,” the Air Force looks to Dubya to greenlight space weapons programs. The Air Force believes ‘we must establish and maintain space superiority,’ Gen. Lance Lord, who leads the Air Force Space Command, told Congress recently. ‘Simply put, it’s the American way of fighting.” Hmmm. I might feel less uneasy about all this if this fellow Lord didn’t sound like he’s channeling Buck Turgidson. ‘Space superiority is not our birthright, but it is our destiny,” he told an Air Force conference in September. “Space superiority is our day-to-day mission. Space supremacy is our vision for the future.“‘