A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics
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A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics | |
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May 20, 2005Comments
I'm still chuckling about the CNN story on toiletgate which includes the phrase "documented allegations." So now we know for sure, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the allegations of quoran-flushing truly exist. Posted by: bk at May 20, 2005 10:19 AMI heard that a copy of the Constitution was found in the Men's Bathroom of the US Senate. Just kidding, of course. This 24-hour news cyle slays me sometimes. Just amazing how a "story" can't figure out how to go away. Posted by: AH at May 20, 2005 01:08 PMFor whatever reason, I'm tuning out politics now. In fact, I'm listening to less talk radio and more music while I work. Since nothing is off topic, I'm going to bring up the Bolton nomination. In an opinion column in the WSJ today, Daniel Henninger reports that Kofi Annan's chief of staff, Mark Malloch Brown, told the Journal that he would prefer a John Bolton, who has the ear of the U.S. President, rather than "a nice, placid soul from the Upper East Side." This is because, without the support of the U.S., the U.N. cannot succeed in its reforms. Which (if you'll pardon me for blowing my own horn) is very close to what I said about the Bolton nomination back in March when it was first made. The appointment of Bolton shows that President Bush is committed to strengthening the U.N. If he were to withdraw Bolton and appoint a milque-toast nominee, that would truly show that he has no respect or concern for it. Posted by: PatHMV at May 20, 2005 02:10 PMBill Frist's secreatary press Amy Call on Salon.com After the press conference, Frist's press secretary, Amy Call, approached us to try to explain how Frist's vote in favor of a filibuster in 2000 isn't inconsistent with his claim now that filibusters are inappropriate, unprecedented and even unconstitutional. In 2000, Call said, "Individual senators voted against cloture. That's not what you're seeing here. What you're seeing is the leadership of the Democratic Party putting together filibusters." What ensued next was the following conversation in which we tried -- really, we did -- to understand why the Democrats' filibusters of judicial nominees are worthy of outrage from a man who once attempted to filibuster a judicial nominee himself. Salon:If the issue is the Democratic leadership's role in the filibusters, would it be acceptable for 41 individual senators who are not part of their party's leadership to put together a filibuster? Call:What you saw with Abe Fortas is a bipartisan filibuster of Abe Fortas. I think it was like ... pretty evenly split. Salon:It was led by Republicans and joined by some Democrats. Call:It was bipartisan. And that was an aberration in 200 years. What you're seeing here is different. What you're seeing is 10 [judges] -- what is it, seven, now? -- in two years be filibustered. And this is a changing of the way the Senate works. But if ... I'm not going to go into hypotheticals. I'm going to tell you what's happening, and what's happening is that the Democratic leadership is leading these filibusters in an effort to hold up these nominations and stop them. I'm just trying to understand the moral outrage over a "leadership-led" filibuster as opposed to some other kind of filibuster. Well, Paez and [Clinton nominee] Marsha Berzon were not filibustered. A cloture vote does not mean that they were filibustered. It means that the Senate as a whole decided to move them forward and the Senate as a whole moved them forward. The Senate moved them forward over Sen. Frist's attempt to filibuster Paez's nomination. I don't know that you can say that a vote against cloture is an attempt to filibuster. But at the time, former Sen. Bob Smith put out a press release that said he was leading a group of senators -- a group that included Sen. Frist -- in an effort to filibuster Paez's nomination, in order to block Paez's nomination. Well, that may be Bob Smith's interpretation. But at the end of the day, what you had was two parties working together to bring that nomination to a close, to bring it to an up-or-down vote. So what matters is that Sen. Frist wasn't successful in filibustering Paez? Isn't this like someone who attempted to commit murder lording his morality over someone who actually succeeded? No, because the difference is you have a majority leader and the leadership of the party who -- it's their job to work with the other party to bring these things forward. You can have a few people in the party voting against a cloture vote. That's OK. So filibusters of judicial nominees are OK so long as they're not led by a party's leadership? But it was not a filibuster. It was not a filibuster because [Paez] is a sitting judge. He's a sitting judge because he was ultimately confirmed, which means, necessarily, that he had majority support. So that line that Sen. Frist uses -- that there have never before been attempts to filibuster judges who have "majority support" -- that line doesn't work anymore, right? There have been attempts to filibuster judges who have majority support, and in fact Sen. Frist participated in one of those attempts. There was not an attempt to filibuster. It was a cloture vote to move the nomination forward. Bill Frist voted against Paez [when the nomination came up for a floor vote]. But first he voted against the cloture motion because he wanted to filibuster Paez's nomination. No, because he did not agree that Paez should be a judge. So what was Sen. Frist hoping to accomplish when he voted against cloture on the Paez nomination? He was making his voice heard on that cloture. And how is that different from what Sen. Harry Reid and the Democrats are doing now? Aren't they just making their voices heard? Because it -- they are denying up-or-down votes to the rest of the Senate on these nominees who have majority support. So they are killing these nominees through the filibuster. Which is exactly what Sen. Frist was trying to do in 2000. But A) not as part of leadership. And B), had it gotten to the point that the cloture vote didn't go through, we could have a conversation about hypotheticals. It was clear that Paez was going through. It was clear that Paez had the 60 votes for cloture. So it doesn't necessarily matter that Bill Frist -- I mean, if it came to a point where he didn't have 60 votes for cloture, and then Bill Frist was part of that, then you would have had successful cloture, and you could have said that Bill Frist [would have] realized that [his vote] was going to stop this cloture vote, and [he would have] stopped it. So attempts at filibusters are OK so long as they're futile? Call:Sort of, yeah. I believe they call this dance the hora Kind of with Rick here...politics is annoying me lately. I actually had to modify my "publishing name" somewhat. I discovered that my employer is somewhat skittish to have an employee posting via name on a political message board. So, hope there's no confusion. I'm still one and the same...just with more anonymous opinions. AR FKA AH Posted by: AR at May 20, 2005 02:40 PMSeems to me the protests about Bolton round here, if any, have been pretty muted. I'm all for the president getting the guy he wants. Even if the "he's not diplomatic enough to be a diplomat" blatherings have some substance, I think it's fair to presume that Bush is appointing the sort of person who will take things in the direction HE wants. He's the President, and that's not just his prerogative, it's his DUTY. Politics has been annoying me, too. The toiletgate stuff quickly devolved into a counterwhining battle between the sides which mostly ignored thet responsibility of muslims for killing people over the treatment of a symbol. Sorry folks, it's not as much about reliable sources and whether or not the toilet was flushed or the handle merely jiggled. It's about our battle against a reflexive and zealousl intolerant ideology that wants us all gone. And the whole bluster over the filibuster ? Honestly, I care more that it ends than that whatever resolution occurs gets the imprimatur of the wonkocracy. Make it end. Get a stick and kill it. Kidnap Frist and Reid and tie them to chairs and hold their eyes open and force them to watch Britney Spears' new TV show until they cry for mercy. If that doesn't work, start cutting off fingers. (for the impaired, them's just jokes, kidnapping and cutting off fingers would be wrong. perhaps even a little wronger than flushing a koran.) At this point it's pretty safe to say the NHL won't come calling on Congress for conflict resolution... Posted by: bk at May 20, 2005 03:03 PMWill someone just put Bob Novak in jail?
ahhh, feel the spin Brookings Institution/Heritage Foundation Welcome to Argentina. Posted by: Marcus at May 20, 2005 03:23 PMRick: Out here in flyover country there are some nice radio stations to listen to online: Rhinelander, Wisconsin PR: wxpr.org Kirkwood Comm. College in Iowa: KCCK.org University of N. Iowa: KUNI.edu University of Iowa: KSUI.edu All for free, of course you will want to make large donations during pledge weeks. Posted by: tim at May 20, 2005 04:10 PMWXPR is an old favorite, didn't know they were online! Thanks. External public debt in the post Eisenhower era peaked in 1994 at 49.3% of GDP. External public debt as of 2004 year-end was 37.2% of GDP. National debt as a percentage of GDP in 2004 for: Argentina--118% You quote higher figures for our national debt when comparing it to other countries than you do when discussing it in isolation. How can this be? Which figures are correct? The remainder is called "intra-governmental holdings." That's internal debt of the U.S. Government, money it owes to itself, debt between one branch of government and another. You know--like the Social Security Trust Funds. Funny how with some folks those "intra-governmental holdings" are of such prime importance when discussing our national debt, but of no importance at all when discussing Social Security reform. Posted by: Tully at May 20, 2005 05:22 PMRick, The Laser out here in Lawrence used to be one of the best alternative radio stations in the country. "Rolling Stone" once listed it in the "Top Ten Radio Stations That Don't Suck". Not any more, though. Went commerical. Sigh.... Posted by: Blue Jean at May 20, 2005 05:34 PMthe best comment so far about the reaction concerning the Newsweek article.
Marcus-- I only got to see the first panel. That's really all that's needed. Posted by: gordo at May 27, 2005 04:24 PM |
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