GET YOUR FILIBUSTER FIX HERE TODAY! This thread will act as an update palate for the judicial nominee debate throughout the day.
NRO has Bill Frist's opening statement here. A tiny taste:
The threshold for advice and consent in the Senate was 50 votes. In the last Congress, the minority party radically increased that threshold to 60 votes. That was wrong. We will restore Senate tradition.
UPDATE: Malkin has loads and loads of background material and links for followers of the debate today.
Also, keep an eye on Polipundit today.
UPDATE: Senator Schumer refered to the nuclear option as an "activist reading" of the constitution earlier today and accused the Republican Party of blatant hypocricy on numerous occasions. Bench Memo has these remarks from Schumer from just a couple of years ago.
Mr. KMIEC. . . . The real constitutional injury here . . . is the entrenchment of rules being imposed from one body onto the next.
Senator SCHUMER. Which could be changed by majority vote.
Mr. KMIEC. And should be changed by majority vote . . .
Senator SCHUMER. Right. That is why – I do not know why you say ‘imposed,’ because . . . the 51 Senators of the majority could propose changes in the rules.
Hypocricy is Schumer's middle name.
This whole thing strikes me as a silly waste of time. Does anybody really have any doubt that, were the situations to be reversed, the Democrats would have exercised the nuclear option long ago?
Let's vote already.
UPDATE: From The Bleachers has the text of Harry Reid's desperate phone call to leftist activists, including this hilarious statement:
He closed by saying the Republican leadership is driven by the “radical right” and “they don’t represent mainstream Republicans in this country.”
That's right Harry. Just keep telling yourself that.
UPDATE: Apparaently, Janice Rogers Brown believes that old people actually eat their grandchildren, according to Harry Reid.
Brown says Seniors are Cannibalizing their Grandchildren. Brown wrote, “Today's senior citizens blithely cannibalize their grandchildren because they have a right to get as much ‘free’ stuff as the political system will permit them to extract.” [pfaw.org; Dissenting opinion in Stevenson v. Superior Court, 941 P.2d 1157,1177, 1187 (Cal. 1997)]
Of course, the above statement is totally false. The case referenced at the end of the quote simply does not contain these words. It is a flat out lie. Rather, the words are from a speech in which she discussed the entitlement mentality of seniors and the effect it is having on future generations. This is a widely accepted, and bi-partisan, fact.
UPDATE: Ted Kennedy just finished speaking and seemed to reiterate Reid's statement that the Democtartic Party will shut down the senate if the nuclear option is approved. Bench Memos has this response from Frist:
What a difference a day makes. Less than 24 hours after he complained the Senate is ignoring issues important to Americans, Democrat Leader Harry Reid today threatened progress on an energy bill, a jobs bill, disaster relief, and a closed intelligence meeting.
Despite Kennedy's rhetoric about the dangerous extremism of "breaking" senate rules on the filibuster, it wasn't a problem for him just a decade ago.
Ten years ago, a group of Democratic senators called for an end to the filibuster for any purpose, including legislation. Their proposal received 19 votes, all from their own party. Among those still serving who voted for that change are Kennedy, John Kerry of Massachusetts, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, Barbara Boxer of California, Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, Paul Sarbanes of Maryland, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin.
UPDATE: It's official. As of 11:30 this morning, the Dem's have shut down senate business, regardless of their assurances to the contrary. This measure is usually regarded as political suicide. One can only hope.
UPDATE: Bench Memos has a link to this photograph at MoveOn. Tell me again that the Dem's aren't doing this because of faith.
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