Breaking News
Jan 26th, 2006 at 4:06 pm by Susie
I have confirmed reports that Kerry wants to filibuster Alito, and he is talking to his colleagues to round up the 41 votes he needs.
Only two Democrats (Ben Nelson and Tim Johnson) support Alito. Only two others (Mary Landrieu and Ken Salazar) say they oppose a filibuster, but are expected to vote against Alito.
So right now, without the support of any Republicans, we still have 41 possible votes for a filibuster. There are roughly 6 moderate Republicans who should also be targeted (Lincoln Chafee, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Bob Smith, Olympia Snowe, George Voinovich). And we should work as hard as we can to persuade Landrieu and Salazar that a vote against Alito is meaningless if they don’t support a filibuster.
You know, this whole thing has made me return to a question I had during the whole Clarence Thomas mess– why the hell do we allow Presidents to put someone on a court for life on a majority vote? Why hasn’t someone proposed a constitutional amendment to change it to three-fifths or two-thirds? If someone can’t get a supermajority of the United States Senate, why are we putting them on a court where they could be sitting for 30 or 40 years?
I mean, looking at Supreme Court nominations going back to 1900, the only nominees who didn’t clear 2/3 of the vote were:
Thomas (52-48) (1991)
Bork (42-58) (1987)
Rehnquist (to CJ) (65-33) (1986)
Carswell (45-51) (1970)
Haynesworth (45-55) (1969)
Parker (39-41) (1930)
Hughes (to CJ) (52-26) (1930)
Pitney (50-26) (1912)
Of that list, of the people approved, the only one who would be considered great by most historians was Hughes. (Rehnquist’s nomination to CJ was extremely controversial, not least of which because he appears to have perjured himself in answering questions about his clerkship with Justice Jackson.)
We were making progress until Byrd jumped on board with Alito. Words fail me!
emailed my senators again.
Byrd must be fearful about his re-election.
Pity.
It’s up to five votes now. That kills it.