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Senate. While they are procedural "precedents" for incremental clarifications of Senate Rules, they do not in any way serve as precedent for the radical deletion of the Senate's long-standing Rules allowing filibusters and providing for cloture.
o By analogy, Miranda v. Arizona is Supreme Court precedent but it furnishes no binding or persuasive precedent for Bush v. Gore. Similarly, the examples cited by Sen. Specter and Mr. Novak do not justify or support the Republican effort to remove one of the pillars of the Senate.
· There is no language in the Constitution prohibiting filibusters.
· The Constitution protects Members' rights to speech and debate. As Joseph Story noted in his 1833 Commentaries on the Constitution: "[A] great and vital privilege is the freedom of speech and debate, without which all other privileges would be comparatively unimportant, or ineffectual."
· The Framers of the Constitution were well aware of filibusters and other parliamentary tactics to delay. There was a filibuster over the location of the U.S. Capitol in the First Congress following the drafting of the Constitution.
· Over fifty law professors wrote to the Senate last year to make clear that "[b]oth the text of the Constitution and historical practices strongly support the constitutionality of the filibuster."
· The Constitution does not require a vote on every nominee proposed or piece of legislation introduced, no matter how ill advised or deserving.
· Since our earliest days, nominees were defeated by blocking confirmation votes. See, e.g., G. H. Haynes, The Senate of the United States (1938).
· Out of the 24 Supreme Court nominees who were never confirmed, more than half (14) were defeated by delay and not by confirmation votes, including Justice Abe Fortas, who was successfully filibustered by conservative Senators in 1968.
Reality: The examples cited by Sen. Specter and Mr. Novak are inapposite.
Each of the four examples cited is qualitatively different from the nuclear option in both order and magnitude. If it were so easy to get rid of the filibuster, it would have been eliminated by a thwarted majority decades if not centuries ago.
DEMOCRATS CONFIRMED 95% OF BUSH JUDGES
204 judges have been confirmed during the Bush Administration.
Democrats have confirmed 35 circuit court nominees, more than in the first term of Reagan or Clinton.
REPUBLICANS CREATE FALSE CRISIS TO PACK THE COURTS AND ROLLBACK RIGHTS
At the end of the last Congress, the federal court vacancy rate hit its lowest point in 14 years.
Democrats rejected 10 of Bush's nominees because they lacked a commitment to protecting the constitutional rights and liberties of every American.
Rejected nominations include:
William Pryor, who believes federal protections for voting rights, the environment, equal rights, education and privacy are illegal. Pryor has argued for the politicization of picking extreme Supreme Court justices, stating "Please God, no more Souters."
Janice Rogers Brown, who has likened federal protections for the elderly to "senior citizens ... cannibaliz[ing] their grandchildren" and that policies against age discrimination don't benefit the public. As a state court judge, she has worked to deny the rights of victims of discrimination, consumers and workers.
Priscilla Owen, a Texas Supreme Court justice who has been hostile to the rights of workers, women seeking to exercise their right to choose, consumers, and injured individuals. Even Attorney General Alberto Gonzales wrote that one of her opinions was "unconscionable judicial activism."
Republicans pocket-filibustered more than 60 nominees.
More than 60 judicial nominees and 200 executive branch nominees of Clinton were defeated by calculated delay by Republicans, not by votes.
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