Senate ends talkathon, not stalemate

With a 53-42 vote, Democrats succeeded in stopping further action on the nomination of Texas judge Priscilla Owen to a seat on a U.S. appeals court. It was the fourth time Democrats have blocked the Owen nomination.

They also voted 53-43 on California judge Carolyn Kuhl and 53-43 on another California judge, Janice Rogers Brown.

With the blocking of Kuhl and Brown, Democrats will have stopped six Bush nominees: Owen, Brown, Kuhl, Mississippi judge Charles Pickering, Alabama Attorney General William Pryor and Hispanic lawyer Miguel Estrada. Estrada dropped his nomination after losing nine filibuster votes.

The Senate has confirmed 168 Bush judicial nominees.

NPR : The 2004 Democratic Presidential Candidates, The Morning Edition Interviews

In an occasional series of interviews on Morning Edition, NPR’s Bob Edwards speaks with the candidates about why they want to be president and the issues that are important to them. In addition, npr.org offers background on the presidential hopefuls by NPR Political Editor Ken Rudin as well as extended versions of the interviews, full transcripts, a review of campaign buzzwords and links to candidates’ Web sites.

For Gephardt, Congress Role Is Both Platform and Hurdle By ROBIN TONER, NYTimes

”My name is Dick Gephardt, I’m going to win the Democratic nomination, and I’m going to beat George Bush in November,” he says.

”Everything we care about is vanishing before our eyes.” …

But Mr. Gephardt, a 62-year-old Missourian, decided to run anyway. To him the question was different: How could he not? He has worked under five presidents, “and I just know I can do this,” he said. “And I know I can do it better than the present occupant.” …

“My philosophy is different from W’s,” he says in his basic stump speech. “We’re all interconnected, dependent on one another. I would not have accomplished what I’ve accomplished without a lot of help.” …

“I’ve watched him up close and he’s not a bad person, he’s a fine person, but he’s not doing the job,” Mr. Gephardt said. “In some ways, he’s inexperienced. In other ways, he’s unknowledgeable. In other ways, he’s rigid and unwilling to change policies that I think just obviously need to be changed.”

During the first Democratic debate (here in Albuquerque), I appreciated Dick Gephardt saying the ‘Bush is a miserable failure.’ mjh

NPR : A Conversation with Rep. Richard Gephardt

NPR’s Michele Norris talks with Democratic presidential hopeful Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri about the importance of labor unions and the state of his presidential bid.

CNN.com – Bush: Stop ‘ugly politics’ over judicial nominees – Nov. 13, 2003

President Bush called for a stop to the ”ugly politics.”

”It’s wrong and it’s shameful, and it’s hurting the system,” he told reporters.

What’s wrong with this picture? First, only one of these nominees has been blocked. Not depicted is William Pryor who is virulently anti-choice. See the photos of Bush signing anti-choice legislation for the true image of our theocracy. mjh

Democrats said that 98 percent of Bush’s nominees have been confirmed, and that the filibuster is a long-standing Senate rule to block ideological nominees who are out of the mainstream.

Democrats also said Republicans used filibusters to block far more of President Clinton’s judicial nominations, and accuse Republicans of making a big deal of the Democratic filibusters to make the Democratic Party look bad. …

“Well, here we go, more complaining and more upset from the other side,” said Barbara Boxer, D-California, on the floor of the Senate. “They just didn’t get 100 percent of what they wanted. They only got 98 percent. The score, 168 to 4. You can print other charts, but here’s the truth.”

“This is a phony filibuster on a phony issue,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, said Wednesday, on CNN’s Judy Woodruff’s “Inside Politics.”

Leahy, the Judiciary Committee’s ranking Democrat, said Republicans used Senate rules to torpedo 63 judicial nominations made by President Clinton.

The Radical Right gets self-righteous when challenged. They contribute mightily to politics turning “ugly”. One of Bush’s greatest lies of the 2000 campaign was the he is “a uniter, not a divider.” BUllSHit! mjh

washingtonpost.com: Alabama Chief Justice Removed From Office

”To acknowledge God cannot be a violation of the Canons of Ethics. Without God there can be no ethics,” [former Alabama Chief Justice Roy] Moore testified.

That quote is precisely why Moore cannot dispense justice. An atheist brought before him on any charges would have to be guilty. Moore is wrong.

It is interesting to note Alabama Attorney General William Pryor’s role as prosecutor of Moore. Prior is up for a federal judicial position and is one of the very few Bush nominees Democrats have blocked for his deep religious convictions and strong anti-abortion expressions. His role here supports his contention that he will always support the law, and not just “god’s law” like Moore. mjh

The prosecutor, Attorney General Bill Pryor, on Wednesday termed Moore’s defiance “utterly unrepentant behavior” that warranted removal from office. …

It was as a circuit court judge in Gadsden in the 1990s that Moore became known as the “Ten Commandments Judge” after he was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union for opening court sessions with prayer and for displaying a hand carved Ten Commandments display behind his bench.

He said Wednesday that when he ran for chief justice in 2000, his entire campaign was based on “restoring the moral foundation of law.” He added that it took him eight months to personally design the monument, which he helped move into the judicial building in the middle of the night on July 31, 2001.

The Village Voice: Nation: Mondo Washington: What Would Demos Do? by James Ridgeway

Of the nine candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, four supported the war: Gephardt, Kerry, Edwards, and Lieberman. Kucinich, Moseley Braun, Sharpton, and Dean were opposed. Clark went back and forth but said on several recent occasions that he opposes it.

Here’s a glimmer — and it’s only a glimmer, because most of them are so annoyingly vague — of the direction of their proposed policies:

Buster & His Friends 11/12/03

Mark Fiore has a talent for making fun of situations that deep-down are really tragic. Duhbya and Company are ramping up nuclear proliferation. mjh