05-17-2005, 12:54 PM
|
#10 (permalink)
|
|
©
|
Filibuster Precedent? Democrats Point to '68 and Fortas
Quote:
The Senate was launched on a full-blown filibuster, with one South Carolina senator consuming time by reading "long passages of James F. Byrnes's memoirs in a thick Southern accent," according to a newspaper account.
That four-day talkathon in September 1968 has largely been forgotten. But some Senate Democrats want to bring it back to mind to counter a key Republican attack against their stalling tactics that have blocked confirmation votes for several of President Bush's most conservative judicial nominees. The GOP claim, asserted in speeches, articles and interviews, is that filibusters against judicial nominees are unprecedented.
Fortas's nomination as chief justice went down in defeat when the Senate voted against halting a filibuster. That situation is being recalled in the dispute over Democratic efforts to filibuster some judicial nominations. (AP Photos)
Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) told his panel this month that the judicial battles have escalated, "with the filibuster being employed for the first time in the history of the Republic." Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) said in a Senate speech last week, "The crisis created by the unprecedented use of filibusters to defeat judicial nominations must be solved."
Such claims, however, are at odds with the record of the successful 1968 GOP-led filibuster against President Lyndon B. Johnson's nomination of Abe Fortas to be chief justice of the United States. "Fortas Debate Opens with a Filibuster," a Page One Washington Post story declared on Sept. 26, 1968. It said, "A full-dress Republican-led filibuster broke out in the Senate yesterday against a motion to call up the nomination of Justice Abe Fortas for Chief Justice."
|
You don't have to look too far back. Seems a bit hypocritical to me.
|
|
|