Legal Affairs Debate Club – Filibusted? by Erwin Chemerinsky, Alston & Bird Professor of Law at Duke University School of Law

Republicans contend that the filibuster for judicial nominations is illegitimate obstructionism. But this ignores that Republicans, too, have used the filibuster for judicial nominations when they were the minority party. In October 1968, Republican Senator Strom Thurmond led a successful filibuster preventing the confirmation of Abe Fortas as Chief Justice and Homer Thornberry as Associate Justice on the grounds that a lame duck President should not fill Supreme Court vacancies. At the beginning of the Clinton presidency, Republicans successfully filibustered Henry Foster to prevent his serving as Surgeon General.

The Republican claim that the Democrats have used the filibuster in an obstructionist manner is disingenuous. In President Bush’s first term, the Senate confirmed 219 of his judicial nominations, and Democrats blocked 10 judicial nominees by filibustering. While Republicans are unhappy with this, it is among the highest success rates for a president’s judicial nominations — more than 90% — in American history. Republicans want to go further by giving President Bush the unique legacy of 100% success in appointing lower court judges and Supreme Court justices.

In an exercise of raw power, Senate Republicans are attempting to eliminate the filibuster for judicial nominations but without following the rules for changing the Senate’s rules.

[Thanks, SM]

Criticism from conservatives signals troubles for Bush’s agenda BY DICK POLMAN, Knight Ridder Newspapers

The pro-war conservatives, however, denounce the dissenters as out to lunch and on the fringes of power; by contrast, conservative hawks crafted Bush’s war policy and dominate much of the conservative opinion empire – the National Review and Weekly Standard magazines, the Rush Limbaugh radio show, the top Washington think tanks. …

Some pro-war conservatives who admire the president are nevertheless worried about his political standing. Peter Robinson, a speechwriter in the Reagan White House, says Bush “will have a real problem holding everyone together, because, believe me, all those conservative congressmen are increasingly going to hear about the heightened level of anxiety when they show up in their districts.” …

And other conservatives are openly deriding Bush’s aspirations for global democratization; commentator Peggy Noonan, the Reagan special assistant, writes that Bush may be suffering “mission inebriation,” and that he risks exposing himself abroad to accusations of “conceit, immaturity or impetuousness.” …

Marshall Wittmann, former lobbyist for the Christian Coalition and a close observer of conservative politics, says: “This debate had been suppressed within the ranks, because of support for a Republican president. Now, with no weapons of mass destruction found, and with the war more difficult than anticipated, all the tensions are coming to the fore.”

But even pro-war conservatives are faulting Bush for a failure to communicate; amid the grim war news, they say, it’s not enough for him to simply keep insisting that “we’re making progress” and that “freedom is on the march.” …

But Christopher Preble, a Navy veteran of the 1991 Gulf War who directs foreign policy at the conservative Cato Institute, cites the ongoing downside – an average of two slain soldiers a day, and $2 billion a week – and offers this warning to the president:

“Conservatives were sold on the assumption that it wouldn’t be long and costly. Now we’re paying for it in taxpayer dollars and paying with our lives. … He can talk about doing other things – (curbing) abortion, reforming Social Security – but the war is where the rubber meets the road. If he truly feels he has a mandate for this, he’s in for a rude awakening.”

I would say the Conservatives kept quiet last year because they wanted Duhbya re-elected more than anything and at any cost. Now that they have what they want, they can try to reclaim their party — good luck.

BTW, if you read this article in the Albuquerque Journal, you have no way of knowing that it was cut by more than 50%, with almost all of the evidence of conservatives against Bush conveniently dropped. Gotta make room for those ads, you know. mjh

The Nation | Blog | The Daily Outrage | The Faith-Based Fraud | Ari Berman

In 2003–according to White House data reported by the Los Angeles Times–Bush doled out $1 billion to hundreds of faith-based groups through a little-noted executive order. More importantly, the Bush Administration used the grants to sway influential African-Americans in key battleground states and reward longtime political supporters at taxpayer expense.

For example, after the Rev. Herb Lusk II delivered the invocation at the 2000 Republican convention, his Philadelphia church received $1 million in federal funds. Bishop Harold Ray, who offered the invocation at a rally for Dick Cheney in Palm Beach, Florida, got $1.7 million for his South Florida ministry. In 2002 Bush personally visited Milwaukee’s Bishop Sedgwick Daniels–who voted for Clinton and Gore–and later awarded him a $1.5 million grant. This fall, Daniels’s face appeared on Republican Party fliers in Wisconsin, endorsing Bush as a man who “shares our views.”

The faith-based initiatives likely played a crucial role in increasing Bush’s take of the black vote, especially in targeted swing states. Funnily enough, the campaign held grant-writing workshops in St. Louis in September (when Missouri was still in play) and Miami in October.