How Not to Tell a Lie
This is just perfect, Bill Frist babbling on the floor of the Senate yesterday trying to explain why 5 years ago he was voting to sustain a filibuster against Richard Paez, a Clinton judicial nominee, when today he keeps claiming that it’s unprecedented, unconstitutional and obstructionist to do the very same thing:
SEN. SCHUMER: Isn’t it correct that on March 8, 2000, my colleague [Sen. Frist] voted to uphold the filibuster of Judge Richard Paez?SEN. FRIST: The president, the um, in response, uh, the Paez nomination – we’ll come back and discuss this further…Actually I’d like to, and it really brings to what I believe – a point – and it really brings to, oddly, a point, what is the issue. The issue is we have leadership-led partisan filibusters that have, um, obstructed, not one nominee, but two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, in a routine way…
The issue is not cloture votes per se, it’s the partisan, leadership-led use of cloture votes to kill – to defeat – to assassinate these nominees. That’s the difference. Cloture has been used in the past on this floor to postpone, to get more info, to ask further questions.
Someone needs to remind him that the Paez nomination had been waiting for a vote for 4 years at the time, so his excuse is nonsense. And that if something is unconstitutional, as he claims, then it’s unconstitutional to do once, not just multiple times. I’d love to hear the opposite too. I’d love to hear Sen. Lieberman babble as he tries to explain why 10 years ago he said:
“I know that some of our colleagues will oppose the alteration, the amendment, that Senator Harkin and I are proposing on the grounds that the filibuster is a very special prerogative that is necessary to protect the rights of a minority. But in doing so, and I say this respectfully, I believe they are not being true to the intention of the Framers of the Constitution, which is that the Congress was the institution in which the majority was to rule, not to be effectively tyrannized by a minority.”
Senators Kerry, Kennedy, Boxer, Feingold and 15 others voted to end all filibusters in the Senate, not just for judicial nominees, in 1995. And every single current Republican voted against it. But they’ve exchanged scripts now, reading the same words they feigned such outrage at a few years ago. And the followers of both parties lap it up without question, their short memories and partisanship-addled brains shrugging off the cognitive dissonance.
Mr. Mencken, where are you now? Never have your words been truer: “The two parties spend most of their time and effort attempting to convince us that the other is corrupt and unfit to lead, and each succeeds admirably at this task.”
9 Responses to “How Not to Tell a Lie”
It’s not that simple, Ed.
First, yes the Paez nomination had been on hold for four years, but not by a filibuster threat; in fact, there were only 13 senators that voted to filibuster the nomination, so they gained cloture by a large margin. So they weren’t even able to hold up Paez’s nomination once it got to the floor, which isn’t a filibuster.
Also it should be noted that despite the failure to hold the nomination, Paez only received 59 votes for confirmation. This would show that there were a considerable number of senators that disagreed with filibustering Paez, although they weren’t willing to vote for him. With today’s filibusters, these are partisan party-line filibusters led by the Senate Minority Leader (Lott did not support filibustering Paez or any other justice).
As for the Lieberman move to get rid of all filibusters, it’s possible to support legislative filibusters without supporting those for judicial nominations. Thus, I can see your point in regards to the Democratic senators, as they wanted to get rid of all of the filibusters, but not the Republicans, particularly since there hadn’t been a filibuster on a nominee with the possible exception of Abe Fortas.
It’s not only possible to support legislative filibusters without supporting judicial filibusters, it’s possible to support Republican filibusters without supporting Democratic filibusters.
The rhetoric I’m hearing from Frist, Santorum, & Co. about the sanctity of an “up or down” vote for judges is just bull, and they know it.
Expertise wrote:
Yes, it is that simple. Bill Frist has been screaming from every microphone he can get his hands on for months that it is obstructionist and unconstitutional to filibuster a judicial nominee to kill the nomination, yet a mere 5 years ago he was attempting to do the very same thing. The fact that there were even fewer of his fellow senators that agreed with him then than agree with the Democratic filibusters now only makes it less defensible, not more defensible. He’s also been feigning shock and outrage that the Democrats would dare to deny each and every nominee the sacred honor of an up or down vote, yet was fully on board when the Republicans used procedural tricks to deny 65 Clinton nominees even a committee hearing, much less an up or down vote. You can quibble about the details all you want, but the bottom line is that this is rank hypocrisy obvious to anyone who isn’t permanently disabled by partisan lunacy.
Doug wrote:
And so is the rhetoric of the Democrats (at least the ones who voted for the Lieberman/Harkin bill in 1995) about how horrible it would be to alter this venerated Senate tradition. It’s bullshit and they know it. What I can’t figure out is why anyone with an IQ over room temperature would take any of them seriously at all.
The purpose of a filibuster is to block legislation, or in this case a nominee, that would otherwise pass. Paez had no chance of being blocked by a mere 13 senators on the court, therefore nothing was held. If it wasn’t on hold, then it wasn’t a filibuster.
Frist had stated in the past that he voted to hold the Paez nomination for scheduling purposes. I believe him since (1. no one can find any other time that he supported a judicial filibuster, and (2. placing bills on hold on the floor for that reason has happened before.
As for the “procedural tricks” – which are nothing more than the powers of the Senate Judiciary Commitee – that’s the benefits of being the majority party in the Senate; the same ones, I might add, that the Democrats enjoyed when they were the majority. There’s a reason why there are rules and powers for the majority and the minority.
Expertise wrote:
For crying out loud, how irrational are you willing to get to defend the indefensible? Bill Frist, who now claims that filibusters are unconstitutional and unconscionable, attempted a filibuster of a judicial nominee a mere 5 years ago. The fact that it failed does not lessen the hypocrisy one little bit. And if you think it does, you are out of your mind.
Except that a press release went out the very next day from one of his partners in the attempted filibuster declaring that they had put together the group of senators that included Frist in an effort to block the nomination of Paez, not for scheduling purposes. Frist is lying, plain and simple.
Which doesn’t lessen the hypocrisy one iota. If you’re going to declare that it’s an inviolable principle that each and every nominee be given an up and down vote, as the Republicans are claiming now, then the fact that you have denied dozens of nominees such an up or down vote makes you a hypocrite. Again, this is obvious to anyone who isn’t so blinded by partisanship that it’s like trying to teach a card trick to a dog to get them to think rationally.
You know, just because you repeat yourself over and over again doesn’t make it more true everytime you say it. You can say that there was a filibuster attempted on Paez, but the circumstances surrounding it were a lot different than what we are seeing today, and doesn’t equate to hypocrisy. As for the press release, several senators have different reasons for doing the same thing. Frist said his vote was through scheduling purposes; others may have been trying to block the nomination itself. Frist could have been using other reasons to hold the nomination.
With respect to the committee hearings, the committee has options to decline a hearing just as home state senators can block it a hearing. The point is that these judges had been voted out of committee to receive a vote on the floor – which is what Republicans have truly stated, and never questioned the committee rights to block a hearing, before or after they came into power – and no nominee other than Fortas has been held up in this manner until the current Bush administration. The discretion of the Senate Judiciary committee has been long established and is not even a question being debated today. In fact, one of the current nominees, Terrance Boyle, was first nominated 15 years ago under the first Bush administration, and was held up in committee by Democrats. There is no hypocrisy there, as both are using the same powers under the same circumstances.
Expertise wrote:
Frist was part of a group that announced publicly that they were trying to block the nomination because he was an “activist judge.” The nominee had been up for four years at that point, there is no possible excuse for wanting to delay things for more information. If you believe Frist’s lie on this, you are either breathtakingly naive or blinded by partisanship.
Actually, the blue slip procedure is no longer followed. Hatch followed it in committee to prevent over 60 nominees from ever getting a hearing. Teh moment that Bush was elected, that procedure suddenly went away. Coincidence? Oh, of course it is. Couldn’t possibly be because of bullshit political games to prevent nominations from getting voted on. Only Democrats do that, right? How absurd.
The extended debate has been interesting for the number of lies used by folks, lies that have been exploded and discredited by blogs. However, court packing began with the biggest liars.