Harry Reid's Nuclear Hypocrisy

[B-Man]

Harry Reid’s Nuclear Hypocrisy

by Roger Pilon

 

Harry Reid is set to “go nuclear.” He wants to end the filibuster as it applies to appellate court nominations — not by a two-thirds vote of the Senate, as Senate rules require, but by a simple majority. And given the short memories now in evidence, he may just succeed.

 

On Monday, for the third time in less than a month, Senate Republicans filibustered an Obama nominee to the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. That’s the court that’s checked the president more than once, as when it said he couldn’t make “recess appointments” when the Senate wasn’t in recess. So in a Tuesday closed-door lunch, Reid moved closer to ending the practice, and it’s reported he picked up crucial support from California Democratic senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer along with Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy among others.

 

The hypocrisy here should not go unnoticed. Although the filibuster for legislation has a long history, prior to 2003 it was seldom used to block executive-branch nominations — and appellate-court nominees in particular. In fact, Democrats themselves began using it this way in the 108th Congress, after they lost the Senate in the 2002 midterm elections. Here’s the backstory.

 

Start with Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court’s December 2000 decision that effectively decided the presidential outcome, creating a firestorm among Democrats, especially among the legal professoriate. On January 13, 2001, for example, 554 professors from 120 law schools took out a full-page ad in the New York Times condemning the Court’s majority for having acted not as judges but as “political proponents for candidate Bush.” And at a Democratic retreat a month later Yale’s Bruce Ackerman urged members not to confirm a single Bush nominee for the Supreme Court until after the 2004 elections.

 

Democrats got their break in May when Vermont senator James Jeffords left the Republican party. That switched control of the Senate to the Democrats, who immediately turned their attention to the eleven appellate court nominees then before the Senate Judiciary Committee, two of them Democrats — a gesture from Bush.

 

Those two were immediately confirmed. The rest would not even get hearings.

 

Instead, Democrats began calling for “litmus tests” — explicit demands that nominees state their views on everything from abortion to affirmative action to Congress’s unquestioned power to regulate anything and everything.

 

Keep reading this post . . .

 

 

 

 

Also, In 2008, Reid promised that he would never bring up the option for debate.

 

“As long as I’m the leader, the answer is no,” Reid said in a 2008 C-SPAN interview.

 

Reid told his Democratic predecessor Tom Daschle, who was conducting the interview, that if Republicans moved forward with the rule change, it would have been “a black chapter in the history of the Senate.”

“I think we should just forget that,” the Nevada senator said. “I hope we never ever ever get to that again.”

 

 

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[DC Tom]

In Reid's defense, I don't think he brought this up for debate.

 

And this is going to bite the Democrats in the ass down the road, big-time.

[IDBillzFan]

Reid needs to do whatever he can to get the media off the pending Obamacare death spiral. Even something remarkably and predictably stupid like this.

[B-Man]

Obama Flip-Flops on Nuclear Option

 

 

The president has changed his tune on the nuclear option since his time in the Senate.

 

While serving in the chamber, he warned in 2005 that the nuclear option was “more about power than about fairness” and an effort to “change the rules in the middle of the game.”

 

 

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[IDBillzFan]

Obama Flip-Flops on Nuclear Option

 

Notfernuthin', but I'm pretty sure most of America has come to realize that absolutely nothing said by Barack Obama has truth to it.

 

Dude's a straight up liar, and dismissing blatant liars is a bi-partisan concept.

[B-Man]

lol..........

 

I look forward to the speedy confirmation of President Cruz’s or President Paul’s nominees, beginning in January 2017. - David French

 

 

 

 

More on Senate Democrats Going Nuclear

by Andrew McCarthy

 

1. Courts cannot function unless Congress funds them — meaning both houses of Congress approving spending on them.

 

2. The Constitution vests in Congress decisions about what federal circuit and district courts we need. It does not say that once courts and the judgeships on those courts are established, these must be maintained forever.

 

 

 

If senate rules are now to be changed on the dime by the majority, all kinds of seemingly impossible things become possible.

 

 

 

 

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Edited November 21, 2013 by B-Man

[Merc]

We have become a banana republic writ large with the democrats changing rules and laws at their whim. Let's see if the MSM protests this.

[IDBillzFan]

We have become a banana republic writ large with the democrats changing rules and laws at their whim. Let's see if the MSM protests this.

 

The WH would love nothing more than for the MSM to spend more time on this, which most Americans don't care about or understand, and less time on the remarkable lie the president told before taking away health insurance from millions upon millions of sick Americans.

[Tiberius]

What a wus!

 

 

 

 

 

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) acted like a "bully" when he invoked the "nuclear option" to eliminate the filibuster on Thursday, according to Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).

"I think what we really need is an anti-bullying ordinance in the Senate," Paul told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "I mean, now we've got a big bully, Harry Reid says he's just going to break the rules and make new rules. Never been done this way before."

 

 

 

Poor little prissy brat!

 

This is so bad that the republicans are threatening to make it even worse if they get control of the senate. Its really bad, so they will make it worse...Republican logic I guess

 

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) declared on the Senate floor that his party wouldn't hesitate to eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees once they regain a majority.

 

Oh no! What will they do then? Appoint a guy like Anton Scalia?? STFU!

 

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/rand-paul-harry-reid-is-a-big-bully

 

We have become a banana republic writ large with the democrats changing rules and laws at their whim. Let's see if the MSM protests this.

 

We have never had Majority rule before! We shouldn't take this!!

[DC Tom]

We have never had Majority rule before! We shouldn't take this!!

 

You are, of course, going to B word and moan when the Republicans are the majority and turn the tables.

[Tiberius]

You are, of course, going to B word and moan when the Republicans are the majority and turn the tables.

 

I'd rather stuff get done and then let the voters decide and have it all bottled up in the Senate where most Americans have no idea what a Fillibuster is. I like it like this better

Edited November 21, 2013 by gatorman

[BillsFanM.D.]

I'd rather stuff get done and then let the voters decide and have it all bottled up in the Senate where most Americans have no idea what a Fillibuster is. I like it like this better

 

It's fair enough to argue the validity of fillibusters. The controversy in changing this rule, however, is equal parts technique deployed and timing of same. I believe Reid would have called this a "Bush-league" maneuver if it happened during W's time.

[Dante]

Notfernuthin', but I'm pretty sure most of America has come to realize that absolutely nothing said by Barack Obama has truth to it.

 

Dude's a straight up liar, and dismissing blatant liars is a bi-partisan concept.

I'm surprised that anyone was able to find a record of him saying or doing anything back in 2005. Edited November 21, 2013 by Dante

[....lybob]

I'm against the Reid's " nuclear option" but lets remember the reason it's being brought up is an unprecedented blocking of the judicial nominating process- I guess the strategy is to run out the clock but 8 years is a long !@#$ing time to use that strategy and what if the Dems win again in 2016 are they going to continue this strategy or is it Obama specif.

[GG]

I'm against the Reid's " nuclear option" but lets remember the reason it's being brought up is an unprecedented blocking of the judicial nominating process- I guess the strategy is to run out the clock but 8 years is a long !@#$ing time to use that strategy and what if the Dems win again in 2016 are they going to continue this strategy or is it Obama specif.

 

Same strategy each side always pulls. The difference being is that in the past, after 1-2 years of purgatory, the POTUS got the message and pulled the nominations. It's been like this forever & a day. Until now. Sad, really.

[IDBillzFan]

Same strategy each side always pulls. The difference being is that in the past, after 1-2 years of purgatory, the POTUS got the message and pulled the nominations. It's been like this forever & a day. Until now. Sad, really.

 

The problem the left has is that they seem simply unable or incapable of thinking things all the way through. This is another one of those times.

[keepthefaith]

The problem the left has is that they seem simply unable or incapable of thinking things all the way through. This is another one of those times.

 

I'd say that both parties are guilty of this and of making a lot of short term decisions and political maneuvers. Do we ever get a good quality solution to anything?

[Tiberius]

So this is over 200 years old going back to War of 1812 days. That's back when the slave holding South dominated the Federal Government, before the North's population overwhelmed them AND when the also anti-simple majority rule measure the 3/5 Clause was in effect. The South then made sure it had anti-simple majority rules in place after the 1844 election when it required the Democratic Convention to have a super majority to win the nomination. The Filibuster was used extensively by the Segregationists in the 1960's and the party that wants to keep just shut down the federal government.

 

It's a tail wagging the dog doctrine and its time has come...

[IDBillzFan]

I'd say that both parties are guilty of this and of making a lot of short term decisions and political maneuvers.

 

Yet I heard George Will make an interesting point about how stupid the left is with this move: if the GOP gets the WH and Congress, it only needs 51 members in the Senate now to repeal Obamacare.

 

Would they do it? Not sure. But it takes an epic fool to not think THAT part of this through.

[DC Tom]

So this is over 200 years old going back to War of 1812 days. That's back when the slave holding South dominated the Federal Government, before the North's population overwhelmed them AND when the also anti-simple majority rule measure the 3/5 Clause was in effect. The South then made sure it had anti-simple majority rules in place after the 1844 election when it required the Democratic Convention to have a super majority to win the nomination. The Filibuster was used extensively by the Segregationists in the 1960's and the party that wants to keep just shut down the federal government.

 

So you're arguing that this is good because filibusters are racist?