“The campaign to prevent the Senate filibuster of the president’s judicial nominations was simply the latest and most public example of similar transformations in Congress and the executive branch stretching back a decade. The common theme is to consolidate influence in a small circle of Republicans and to marginalize dissenting voices that would try to impede a conservative agenda.” The WP offers a big-picture view of recent GOP attempts to centralize power in the executive.
Tag: Congress
Spotlight on Bolton.
A day after Senator George Voinovich (R-OH) excoriated the pick in print, the Bolton nomination goes before the full Senate. (Alas, despite Voinovich’s letter, the GOP looks likely to fall in line.)
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.
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…
Duck and Cover.
Opportunities for a compromise dwindle as the Senate verges on the precipice of nuclear meltdown. Honestly, it’s still hard for me to fathom Frist having the votes.
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.)
Catkiller’s Big Day.
Undeterred by the Dem’s last-minute attempt to let less-controversial judges pass through first, Bill Frist initiates the nuclear countdown in the Senate. “‘I don’t rise for party,’ said Senator Frist. ‘I rise for principle.’” That is to say, the principle of seeing all the right-wing fundies line up behind his 2008 presidential bid.
Defcon 2.
Nuclear negotiations break down between Reid and Frist, setting the stage for a cataclysmic Senate meltdown this week over Karl Rove’s pet judge, Priscilla Owen. (That is, unless the Ben Nelson-John McCain compromise — which seems a considerable capitulation by the Dems — gains currency with the GOP.) Can Catkiller really have the votes? Surely, there are more than three so-called “conservatives” in the Senate who would vote against this type of radical rule change. Or has the GOP sunk so low? Update: A few days old now, but ah well: Salon offers a handy nuclear primer.