Senate Catfight!!
Senator Robert Byrd, he of the affinity for Nazi comparisons and for not being quite so happy with giving blacks civil rights, had penned an Op-Ed in today’s Washington Post.
His point? It’s a fine and honored tradition to prevent the Senate from voting on the President’s judicial nominations and that any rule change that would outlaw filibusters on nominees (the “nuclear option” is bad, bad, bad.
A “nuclear option” is targeting the Senate. No, this isn’t some terrorist plot. Rather, some in the Senate are considering dropping a legislative bomb that threatens the rights to dissent, to unlimited debate and to freedom of speech.
President Bush has renominated 20 men and women to the federal bench, seven of whom the Senate rejected last year. To force a vote on these nominees, some senators are hoping to launch a parliamentary weapon aimed at the heart of open and extended debate. By a simple majority vote, a Senate filibuster on judicial appointments would be “nuked” for all time.
It starts with shutting off debate on judges, but it won’t end there. This nuclear option could rob a senator of the right to speak out against an overreaching executive branch or a wrongheaded policy. It could destroy the Senate’s very essence — the constitutional privilege of free speech and debate.
And he drops in this gem of a line at the end.
Yes, Americans believe in majority rule, but we also believe in minority rights.
Yes, well, America was glad to welcome you to that concept after 1965, weren’t we?
Senator John Cornyn had fired back a rebuttal. It’s not surprise that Senator Byrd has not exactly played well with the facts and that he seems to have done a bit of a flip-flop on the whole filibuster issue.
Sen. Byrd said that restoring Senate tradition “could rob a senator of the right to speak out against an overreaching executive branch or a wrongheaded policy. It could destroy the Senate’s very essence — the constitutional privilege of free speech and debate.” But history—and Sen. Byrd’s own actions—prove otherwise.
In fact, Sen. Byrd is often credited with pioneering the Senate procedure he now derides as a denial of free speech and a threat to our liberties. Recall that it was Sen. Byrd who led the charge to establish new Senate precedents in 1977, 1979, 1980, and 1987 – including a number of precedents that were designed specifically to stop filibusters and other delay tactics that were previously authorized under Senate rules or prior precedents:
Yeah, but back then the rule change would have favored him, wouldn’t it?
The nicest part of the rebuttal is that Senator Cornyn let Senator Byrd rebut himself.
“This Congress is not obliged to be bound by the dead hand of the past. . . . . The first Senate, which met in 1789, approved 19 rules by a majority vote. Those rules have been changed from time to time…. So the Members of the Senate who met in 1789 and approved that first body of rules did not for one moment think, or believe, or pretend, that all succeeding Senates would be bound by that Senate. . . . It would be just as reasonable to say that one Congress can pass a law providing that all future laws have to be passed by two-thirds vote. Any Member of this body knows that the next Congress would not heed that law and would proceed to change it and would vote repeal of it by majority vote.”
–U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd, Jan. 15, 1979
Regardless of your side on this issue, it always helps to have the facts in hand before you decide.
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Category: The Good Old US of A
