Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Judicial nominees -- we lose

"Stakes still high after Senate makes deal"

MoveOn was claiming a victory in the judicial nominee showdown in the Senate today. But it didn't look much like a victory from where I was sitting. A victory would have been Frist putting the "nuclear option" to a vote, and having it fail, because enough Republican senators had the backbone to stand up for the right thing.

I keep hearing that "we saved the right to filibuster," but did we really? And exactly how useful was that if the Republicans still got what they wanted -- their nominees put on the bench? Seems to me they just bullied the minority and got their way. And now that they know that they can get away with it, what's to stop them from doing it again?

We won, but we lost.

It's like a teacher who gets the bully to stop beating up the other kids for their lunch money by making them give the bully their lunch money. Great, so you didn't get beat up, but you're still not going to have anything to eat.

The radical court nominees are still going to get confirmed. And if push comes to shove the next time around, say for a nominee to the Supreme Court, what's to stop them from voting to make the changes then?

We are so fucked.

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