Judicial Blogging

The indispensible Orson Scott Card gives a very clear and concise rundown of the judical nominee conflict. He lays out the pros and cons of killing the filibuster for nominees. He also makes the excellent point that the unprecedented move of filibustering judical apointments is the real "nuclear option". The biggest question about all this is will this come back to bite the Republicans in the butt?

"Conservative Republicans who are eager to get the rule change should consider this: President Hillary Clinton with a Democratic majority in the Senate.

Now ... are you sure you want the filibuster on judicial appointments to be taken away?

Of course, there's this to consider: Do you believe, for one moment, that an extreme Leftist Congress, with the media on their side, would hesitate even for a second to change the rules and eliminate the filibuster in order to allow Hillary to appoint judges that would support her agenda?"

That last paragraph really sums it up for me. Republicans would get bitten regardless. The Democrats have no interest in the "traditions of the senate", if the situations were reversed there wouldn't even be a debate. Sometimes it seems as though they would like to make it illegal for a Republican to be elected. Sometimes I wish Republicans were as ruthless as Democrats are, but that's partially why I vote for them.

In other Judical nominee news NRO has started up a new blog called Bench Memos having to do with all things judicial and filibuster related. Today there was a particularly good post by Bradford A. Berenson called A little Forgotten History where he details how all this got started:

The president presented a slate of well-qualified, mainstream nominees. The slate was racially diverse. It included a mix of men and women. And, perhaps most importantly, it included both Republicans and Democrats. People forget this, but two of the original eleven were judges originally nominated by President Clinton: Roger Gregory and Barrington Parker. In the case of Judge Gregory, it was the first time in history that a president had re-nominated a failed circuit-court nominee originally nominated by his predecessor from the other political party. This was unprecedented and highly significant, and it was intended to send a message. It was an olive branch. The president highlighted it in his speech that day, asking the Senate to move beyond the bitterness of the past in the judicial wars and to start afresh in a spirit of cooperation and good faith.

The Democrats took the olive branch the president extended and slapped him in the face with it. They immediately held hearings for, and confirmed, the two Democrats among the nominees and then held up the rest, refusing even to hold hearings for a long time on most of them. They then complained incessantly (and, for the most part, falsely) about not having been adequately consulted by the White House with regard to these nominations.

The arrogance of those people is just astounding. How many presidents consult members of the opposing party on policy or nomination decisions? NONE!!! But to a democrat anything that they disagree with is "out of the mainstream" or "radical", and the people of this country must be protected from it. The truth is that they wouldn't cooperate with any judicial apointment that doesn't hate Bush as much as they do. That, my friends, is a radical position.

Anyway keep an eye on the Bench Memos and Confirmthem.com for the latest on the battle for the Constitution.