CShine

Nice to see that wiser heads have prevailed and we're not going to have the nation's entire legislative agenda getting hijacked over a petty squabble about a few secondary level judges.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,157431,00.html

MSD

Have you read the TFP rules? It clearly states that posting links and one-liners about the content is not acceptable. Edit your post and include the article if you want us to read it and respond.

Hardknock

Personally, I don't have a problem with clicking a link. But that's just me.

jcookc6

The right got 3 judges, after that what happens? Will the left go back to thier obstuctionism? Probably.

Elphaba

This was not a petty squabble by any means, but that ground has already been covered under another thread.

adam

Despite being less than enthusiastic about Bush's nominees, I was glad to see a deal. It wasn't worth melting down the senate for them (which was the alternative). And the Democrats preserved the option to filibuster S.C. nominees if necessary.

dksuddeth

this deal did nothing but prolong the inevitable meltdown and provide 3 judges a pass.

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MoonDog

I just hope that the GOP understands that they might want to use that filibuster option in the future...pretty stupid issue, if you ask me. I'm not with my GOP leadership on this one.

Superbelt

Senator Brownback (R- Hypocracy) is already planning on using it against any embryonic Stem Cell bill that makes it to the Senate floor.

alansmithee

They didn't want to eliminate the filibuster entirely, just it's use in the case of judicial nominees.

Although it does seem to imply that if you can limit it in that case, you could limit it in others.

arch13

There is the interesting slippery slope. Once you have elliminated it's use in one part of the senate, there is little ability to agrue against elliminating it from other situations.
It's would be just as easy for me to say "Each bill deserves a fair up or down vote" on the Senate floor, so lets eliminate the filibuster from preventing this up or down vote!
Changing the rules to serve the agenda of any argument forgets why those rules where created in the first place, which was often with great care and thought as to their effect in the long term.

I worry if this agreement will hold when/if it comes time to vote on a SCOTUS judge.
The way I read the agreement, the Dem's have agreed not to filibuster anyone broadly perceived as moderate. The problem there is the difference in what moderate is between the two current party's (And I think we need to remember that they are only the two current party's, as they have not always existed, and will not always exist.)
I worry even more that our bicameral legislature is quickly becoming devoid of moderates, or even those that vote based on their constituatncy instead of a current party line.

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alansmithee

This might be off-topic, but I'm not sure if the statement I bolded is true. This is the longest period (so far) where the two major parties have been the same. I was thinking a while ago that maybe the current polarization is an offspring of the parties gettting settled in. And it's not like there weren't ample opportunites for alternate parties to overtake either the Dems or Reps, yet they have maintained in power. People have been born over 3 generations thinking not just that it's a two-party system, but that it's a Dem-Rep system. This might be leading to people becoming more and more ingrained into one of the two parties earlier, and therefore less likely to change (either by accepting their parent's views, or rejecting them). It also seems that elections are less and less about convincing people to vote for your candidate, but more and more about getting your base to vote (which is one of the reasons that I think that the dems lost, and that Howard Dean might have had a better shot).

What might this have to do with the filibuster situation? Those 14 "moderates" might have just cut their own throats politically. One thing that many repubs and dems have agreed about with the agreement is that they don't like it (even though they differ why they don't like the agreement). Another is that they pretty much went against their own party leadership, which might lose them key support, or even lead to challenges internally for their seats, or important senate posts.