WOOO HOOO!!! ~ ~ about frigging time the Dems said "enough games" ~ I am thrilled about this vote ~ every, EVERY, nominee deserves an up-or-down vote ... no matter who nominated her/him ~ there are "live links" to more/corroborating info in the original ~ Sooz

Dems execute ‘nuclear option’
11/21/13 01:00 PM
By Steve Benen

Proponents of Senate reforms could be forgiven for feeling like Charlie Brown. Changes to the Senate’s filibuster rules have been promised, talked about, brought up, and debated countless times, but whenever it was time to follow through, the ball would be pulled away at the last moment.

That is, until today.

Overnight, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) office made clear that today would be the day for the so-called “nuclear option” – a procedural tactic Senate Republicans came up with eight years ago, that allows members to change filibuster rules with simple majority vote. “We’re not bluffing,” one senior aide said.

And they weren’t.


Three Democrats – Michigan’s Carl Levin, Arkansas’ Mark Pryor, and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin – voted with the Republican minority to allow filibusters to continue. They failed on the 52-48 vote. (If you look at the roll call later, a “nay” vote was for the nuclear option – it was a vote to overturn the ruling of the chair.)

And with this vote, effective immediately, the Senate will operate under a new precedent: judicial nominees and nominees for administration posts cannot be filibustered; confirmation votes will be majority rule. According to Democratic leaders, this preserves the option to filibuster Supreme Court nominees, though there’s some disagreement on this point.

Republicans are, of course, outraged that Democrats “changed the rules.” It’s therefore important to realize that by executing the “nuclear option,” Democrats didn’t change the practices of the Senate so much as they restored the institution to its norms – for more than 200 years, judicial and administration nominees were subjected to up-or-down votes. Now, they will be again.

In other words, the resolution of this fight is hardly radical; indeed, it’s the exact opposite. The Senate, now more functional than it was yesterday, will now exercise its “advise and consent” role the way it used to – the way it was designed to.

It’s important to recognize the fact that this was a move Senate Democrats were reluctant to make, and avoided for years.

But Senate Republicans, eager to ignore election results they disagreed with, picked a dangerous fight, created a constitutional crisis, and left the majority party with no choice. As we’ve discussed over the course of the year, we’ve seen the first-ever filibuster of a cabinet nominee – a Defense Secretary nominee during a war, no less – and a filibuster of a CIA nominee. Republicans have filibustered judicial nominees they don’t like and judicial nominees they do like. GOP senators have, for the first time, used filibusters to stop the executive branch from enforcing the law.

But it was the decision from Senate Republicans to create a blockade on all D.C. Circuit nominees that ultimately forced Democrats’ hands. For the first time in American history, a Senate minority said it would block every nominee for a federal bench, regardless of the individual’s qualifications, because they disapprove of the nation’s choice to serve as president of the United States. It wasn’t until this week that nuclear-option skeptics in the Democratic caucus decided they’d seen enough.

Republicans are accusing Democrats of having done something extraordinary, but by any fair measure, Republicans did this to themselves.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/dems-execute-nuclear-option

I'm gonna hang a picture of Reid on my wall! Finally cajones.

seriously. this is a great day. i would like to have seen it a FULL YEAR AGO, but this will do quite nicely.

I fully support these developments. I remember being so disappointed that Bush got his way but i also remember the sky did not fall.

Don't like raining on parades, but remember that eventually the balance of power in the Senate is bound to change. At that point this is going to work against the Dems. In fact, it was the Dems who started abusing the filibuster thing. They may well have shot themselves in the foot.

Yep, that could happen, jim ~ but right now, with the Senate unable to function strictly because of GOP/TP obstruction, it is TERRIFIC ~ and I love that GOP/TPers are wailing how "unfair" it is that Dems are being so mean to them ~ the image below says it all for me ~ man up, GOP/TPers and DO YOUR JOB!!! ~ Sooz

horsefeathers. all appointees should be given an up or down vote. PERIOD. that is part of what it means to be in power.

An excellent commentary ~ ~ Sooz

A Nuclear End To Denial
November 25th, 2013 12:00 am
E. J. Dionne

WASHINGTON — Those who lament the Senate Democrats’ vote to end filibusters for presidential nominations say the move will escalate partisan warfare and destroy what comity is left in Congress. Some also charge hypocrisy, since Democrats once opposed the very step they took last week.

In fact, seeing the world as it is rather than pining for a world that no longer exists is a precondition for reducing polarization down the road. With their dramatic decision, Senate Democrats have frankly acknowledged that the power struggle over the judiciary has reached a crisis point and that the nature of conservative opposition to President Obama is genuinely without precedent.

What happened on Nuclear Thursday has more to do with the rise of an activist conservative judiciary than with the norms of the Senate. From the moment that five conservative justices issued their ruling in Bush v. Gore, liberals and Democrats realized they were up against forces willing to achieve their purposes by using power at every level of government. When the Bush v. Gore majority insisted that the principles invoked to decide the 2000 election in George W. Bush’s favor could not be used in any other case, they effectively admitted their opportunism. Dec. 12, 2000, led inexorably to Nov. 21, 2013.

Bush v. Gore set in motion what liberals see as a pernicious feedback loop. By giving the presidency to a conservative, the five right-of-center justices guaranteed that for at least four years (and what turned out to be eight), the judiciary would be tilted even further in a conservative direction.

Bush was highly disciplined in naming as many conservative judges as he could. His appointments of Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito bolstered the Supreme Court’s conservative majority. The court later rendered such decisions as Citizens United, which tore down barriers to big money in politics, and Shelby County v. Holder, which gutted a key part of the Voting Rights Act. Both, in turn, had the effect of strengthening the electoral hand of conservatives and Republicans.

With the conservatives’ offensive as the backdrop, Senate Democrats and liberals on the outside revolted in 2005 against the Republican threat to use the nuclear option when the GOP controlled the Senate. Progressives felt they had no choice but to throw sand into the gears of a juggernaut.

Liberals said things eight years ago that are being used by conservatives to accuse them of hypocrisy now. I didn’t have to look far for an example of what they’re talking about.

In a column in March of 2005, I called the GOP’s effort to speed the confirmation of conservative judges “a blatant effort to twist the rules” that ignored “the traditions of the Senate.” I might take back the “traditions of the Senate” line, a rhetorical attempt to call conservatism’s bluff. But what animated my argument then is the same concern I have now: This era’s conservatives will use any means at their disposal to win control of the courts. Their goal is to do all they can to limit Congress’ ability to enact social reforms. At the same time, they are pushing for measures — notably restrictions on the right to vote — that alter the electoral terrain in their favor.

And it is simply undeniable that in the Obama years, conservatives have abused the filibuster in ways that liberals never dreamed of. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid cited the Congressional Research Service’s finding that in our history, there have been 168 cloture motions filed on presidential nominations. Nearly half of them — 82 — happened under Obama. According to CRS, of the 67 cloture motions on judicial nominees since 1967, 31 occurred under Obama.

Republicans gave the game away when all but a few of them opposed Obama’s three most recent appointments to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals not on the merits but by accusing the president of trying to “pack the court.” In fact, Obama was simply making appointments he was constitutionally and legislatively authorized to make. His nominees were being filibustered because they might alter the circuit court’s philosophical balance. The GOP thus demonstrated beyond any doubt that it cares far more about maintaining conservative influence on the nation’s second most important judicial body than in observing the rules and customs of the Senate.

This is why the Senate Democrats’ action will, in the end, be constructive. The first step toward resolving a power struggle is to recognize it for what it is. The era of denial is finally over.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/a-nuclear-end-to-denial/