Another Activist Judge Overrules the Will of the People

The founding fathers were anti Democracy because it was rule by the majority rule by the rabble. They were Anti Republic because it held little power to the people. We are a Democratic Republic. We have 3 branches of government. The judicial Branch of the governments job is to do two things. Judge if one has broke a law. To over see that the Laws are not unconstational no mater who voted for them (our Repusanitives in congress and the senate or the people)

Personally, I'd like to see the filibuster permantly outlawed, even if it means some things I disagree with go through. I think that the filibuster is the greater evil and is just one more excuse for these people on the Hill to do nothing. You don't see anyone filibustering to prevent them voting themselves a pay raise.

We sent them there to work for the good of the country, not for political infighting.

-Kiamat Dusk

hahahahahha OH MY GOD THATS IS HILARIOUS HAHHHAHAHAH.
Dont even get me started on the filibuster.

Wow. This is what I love the most about our country. Heres a little bit of background info for those of you too lazy to google. (especially the original poster)



***Fast Foward to Today***
"Hi, my name is Kent Kroker and I was born to an interracial marriage. Fifty years ago, my mother probably would have been stoned to death or ostracized by the community as a whore and my father lynched - That is, until a bit of judicial "activism" protected my family's rights as human beings. In fact, their defense of my lineage was so successful that the intense racial segregation and miscegenation laws of the past are now distant memories. Nonetheless like most Good Americans today I just hate gays. I mean, they are GAY! They do... GAY STUFF! As a Good American I stand tall against any such disgusting behavior with my President and Party!"

Think of the filibuster as the safety valve on a pressure cooker. Maybe we need to tweak its sensitivity level, but by no means would I want to be in a kitchen with a pressure cooker that lacks a safety valve.

I'd have to disagree with you here, Kiamat. Unlike the Judicial Branch, the senators and congressmen must be elected regularly, and are therefore subject to influence. This means we need to hold their decisions to a higher level of scrutiny. The Founding Fathers never wanted the minority to lose its voice in the national debate.

Things like filibustering may seem against the will of the majority...but that's the point. If the majority has overwhelming support, then the bill or vote inquestion has passed good scrutiny. There are times when a simple majority vote is not the will of the people, however. In the case of Surpreme Court nominations, filibustering prevents parties who currently control Congress to put in biased judges.

This is the point of Court nominations...do put in a person who is objective, and willing to listen to all sides before making a decision. Republicans want to eliminate the filibuster to put in a judge that is *not* objective, and leans to the party's views...I find this painfully obvious. I don't think this should happen...if they want to get a nominee onto the Court, they should get a supermajority of support...not just the slim majority they currently have in the Senate.

Congressmen on both sides of the aisle are expressing misgivings about the "nuclear option" of eliminating the filibuster. The far-sighted among the Republicans see that when power swings the other way, as it inevitably will, they may want to retain that option.

The judges in question have already been rejected as unsuited. To nominate them again was irresponsible. To change the rules of engagement just to give them a free pass would be criminal.

In this instance, I'd have to side with the majority of public opinion on this issue which favors retaining the filibuster. I think Frist may be torpedoing his presidential ambitions by pressing the issue.

One can only hope.

.

Well, yeah....but then I thought Bush was torpedoing *his* presidential ambitions by ordering the invasion of Iraq on flimsy evidence.

Never underestimate the sheep mentality of the American populace.

OMG - it's .....

Bush had more of his judges passed through Congress than Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr. or Clinton. He submitted 218 and only 10 weren't passed.

He resubmitted 7 of those. The sign of a good leader is an ability to compromise and move on. You cannot expect 100% of your nominees to pass.

208/218 is 95.4% of everyone he pushed forward. That is a DAMN GOOD record. I can't believe Republicans have the audacity to make this an issue. It is just silly.

While the majority "leadership" may be short on imagination, innovation and intellect they certainly make up for it in:

I don't think it's quite as simple as quoting the 208/218 ratio and dismissing the issue.

http://www.dalythoughts.com/index.php?p=2983

This looks at "higher" Circuit Court nominations.

Mainly the comparisons are interesting, and some of the comments/discussion below the essay are too.

Basically this is trying to say that the lower level nominations are going through fine (thus giving GWB this great "95%" approval rating because there are many more of them), but Bush's "higher" level nominations are not being approved at anywhere near the same rate.

There also appears to be a general downward trend over time where ALL presidential nomination approval ratings drop pretty consistently. (Indicating politics becoming more polarized and partisan starting from around the 80's or so? Sound like a familiar theme?) Although, GWB's numbers are an extremely drastic difference compared to the trends... Which, if partisan politics are to blame, would seem to indicate a huge increase in partisan bullshit lately. (omg, what a surprising news flash, huh?)

In short I don't think either "side" has an innocent record here, but the current Republican complaints cannot be easily dismissed.

Nice number. You can mix and match it all you like.

He has sent forth 218 total and 210 total have been confimed.

Nice chart though. I could swear I saw a WMD hidden in there.

Quite right. But since Reagan's election, judicial nominations put forth by the presidents have increasingly been selected by ideological adherence to the party dogma, not by their qualifications as jurists. The "partisan bullshit", in other words, is being initiated by the Executive branch, which sees a no-lose proposition: either it gets its idealogues into lifetime appointments, or it gains political ammunition to accuse the opposition party of obstructionism. The House of Representatives falls for it every time, like the mindless lemmings they are (yes, on both sides of the aisle). The Senate, well, occasionally they show glimmers of common sense (yes, on both sides of the aisle). But on the whole, it weakens the independence of both Legislative and Judicial branches.

The end result is a concentration of power in the hands of the Executive, a growing and troubling trend. Centralization of power is always cause for concern... particularly if the party doing the centralizing is simultaneously pontificating against "big government" and for "states rights". It makes one wonder what the real agenda is.

I partially agree. I don't place blame solely on the Executive branch, not by a longshot. I don't place blame on either "side of the isle" either, it somewhat pisses me off to see someone defend one side without even considering the fact that the other party isn't innocent either.

I'm not sure I'd say there's a concentration of power in the Executive either, I think it's more of a gridlock type situation, but maybe you can clarify why you believe that better.

BTW, are you saying the current administration is pontificating against "big government" and for "states rights", or was that just a general statement?


Neehai, you can argue that this doesn't mean anything if you want, but it really does. BOTH parties appear to be increasingly gridlocking one another on these types of nominations, if anything it indicates that they are more important moreso than they aren't important**. It just so happens that now it's getting to the point of absurdity.

Since Circuit Courts can "override" District Courts, it is worthwhile separating the two to see what's really going on. If you want to give the appearance of being "fair", you could approve all the likes of Pat Buchanan (sp?) you want to the District Courts, but if you put the likes of Ted Kennedy in the higher level courts your BIG ISSUE agendas can still be defended.

**Now you could get subjective and argue that there is a difference in quality of the nominations at both levels, but that's a whole new discussion.

In the case of Filibuster (the issue at hand) my numbers are correct. I don't see how removing a tool that promotes more critical thinking and cross-party negotiations is a good thing.

After all, if the Senate was Republican by more than a simple majority (assuming it reflects the will of the people) then a filibuster wouldn't be an issue. I cannot believe how much this issue has been twisted.

You can't get everything you want with a simple majority so you try to change the rules? It's just not right. The solution is to win more Senate seats, not to change the rules.

I'm not convinced that Filibusters should be done away with...
And the issue at hand that I'm discussing is simply the decline in nominee approval rates for Circuit Court judges.

What I do think is that they should stop abusing and overusing filibusters like they clearly are. Moderation is good, but historically what's happening now and what the trend has been for the last few decades is NOT moderation.

Maybe part of the problem is the length of time judges are appointed for, which I never quite understood really. If they have to be long length terms, why not 10 years, 8 years, etc? Maybe then politicians wouldn't be panicing and using every means at their disposal to fight appointments at all costs.

The real worry that I have here is that this will screw up our judicial system, hell it probably already is. It's not like it's a highly polished law-machine now. How the heck will the country operate if we can't get judges appointed?? Lawyers screw things up enough we don't need the system breaking down any more than it already is.

I still don't think the rate is too high.

The filibuster options ensures that a radical judiciary cannot be appointed by either side.

Remember, if you have a 60% you can stop a filibuster already. So the system accomodates a Senate that is representing more than a majority of the will of the people. It is only when you have the following scenarios that a filibuster affects judicial nominations down party lines.

51-49
52-48
53-47
54-46
55-45
56-44
57-43
58-42
59-41

Nine scenarios. That's it! It is a system that ensures that if one party has a narrow majority in the Senate that they can't just go passing anything they want. This safeguard allows for debate and compromise.

Too many Republicans are clouding the issue of the filibuster and making it sound as if a handful of Democrats could hold up everything forever. That simply isn't the case.

If you want to be able to approve whoever you want all you have to do is have 60%. It's that simple and frankly not too much to ask.

Well, this is the trend in the numbers:

President	       Confirmation Percentage, 1st & 2nd Congress

Truman                   90.9%	
Eisenhower               88.5%	
Johnson                  97.0%	
Nixon                    92.7%	
Ford                     79.2%	
Carter                   91.8%	
Reagan                   78.6%	
G.H.W. Bush              77.8%	
Clinton                  71.4%	
G.W. Bush                52.2%

You really don't see a problem with this? Especially with the last two (Clinton and W) administrations?

(If you look at the 1st congresses only it's not as bad for Clinton, but about the same for GWB.
And Kennedy who had a pretty big dip is left out of this list for obvious reasons. See link for other table.)

Where did those numbers come from?

I really just wanted an excuse to say "Sexual Congress."

No, I don't have a problem with those numbers.

You are pulling a single set of numbers out just to illustrate a false point.

The fact is that it takes 60 members of the Senate for cloture. When the Senate is evenly divided (which means the will of the people is also evenly divided) you can't expect to push through Executive appointees with a simple majority.

Why are Republicans whining like little babies just because they are forced to follows the rule of law.

Someone show me filibuster in the Constitution. The filibuster is a ridiculous misuse of the people's time and money and I mean from BOTH sides.

-Kiamat Dusk

Filibuster is an argumentation technique/tactic which is allowed by Senate rules in their debates. It is not a basis for the structure of American government or a fundamental concept of American law, which is what the Constitution is about.

It's sort of like asking "Someone show me where in the Constitution it says the Senate has to have seperate restrooms for male and female Senators. Although there may be good arguments on both sides of the issues of bathrooms and filibuster, they are not issues of constitutional law.

Agree totally.

Well Kiamat, I guess you got me there! I guess they didn't write filibuster into the constitution.

/boggle

How do you not choke on your own spittle?

Kiamat,

Heh.. it's not in there, the constitution requires 2/3 of the vote for certain things and this isn't one of them. So if you go by how they designed the most fundamental rules of the government, they didn't think such a requirement was needed here. So, at first filibusters didn't exist. Correct me if I'm wrong...

Of course there's always the possibility that they made a mistake, and after some number of years "filibusters" DID become possible. So the best argument to me seems to be that filibusters are simply "part of how the senate works", and thus can be used in this case. (Of course I'm still undecided about that argument..)



The point I'm illustrating is fact, there's nothing false about it. The reason for the whining (justified or not) is that something new is happening now.

You seem to think that I believe filibusters should be eliminated entirely or something, but that's not the case. I'm not even 100% that the nuclear option is a good idea. So far I've only showed that the approval ratings of high level judicial nominees have been dropping steadily, especially in recent years. That was my point, and it's fact, unless the numbers are just way way off which I seriously doubt. They're from the site I originally linked to, which gets them from the Library of Congress and senate.gov.

I'm also saying that I think it's political polarization that is causing it, both during Clinton's administration and currently. You keep going back to the filibuster argument which, for me, the jury is still out on...that's why I haven't been arguing that it should be changed or done away with. If you want to talk about the filibuster thing, I need to think about it further. I may take back my statement that it's clearly being abused, although I do believe it's being used to do something that hasn't been done before, at the very least. That may be enough of a justification for a re-evaluation of the way the senate operates--in the case of judges only (nuclear op)--yes, even after this much time.