[Mb-civic] The Senate's looming nuclear winter

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

The Senate's looming nuclear winter

If Republicans get away with changing the rules on judicial 
filibusters, decades of legal precedents are doomed. It's time for a 
preemptive strike. 

By Arianna Huffington for SALON

Dec. 23, 2004 |  Right now, somewhere in the White House, 
administration strategists are hatching plans to go to war. Battle 
plans are being drawn. Timing and tactics are being finalized. A 
nuclear option is even being openly discussed. 

The designated target? Iran? Syria? North Korea? 

No, much closer to home: the U.S. Senate. 

Salivating at the chance to radically remake the Supreme Court, the 
president and his loyal lapdogs in the world's most exclusive club 
are plotting to obliterate over 200 years of Senate tradition by 
eliminating the use of filibusters against judicial nominees. 

The Robert's Rules of Disorder scheme would involve -- who else? -
- Vice President Dick Cheney, in his role as presiding Senate officer, 
ruling that judicial filibusters are unconstitutional and Majority 
Leader Bill Frist squashing the Democrats' inevitable objection to 
such an edict by tabling the motion. As long as we're "spreading 
democracy" abroad, no reason to leave out the home front, right? 

This is the so-called nuclear option, embraced with a wink and a 
nudge by Frist in November when he told the conservative 
Federalist Society: "One way or another, the filibuster of judicial 
nominees must end." 

Invoking this parliamentary dirty trick would eliminate unlimited 
debate on judicial nominations and lower the number of votes 
needed before a nominee could be confirmed from the 60 
necessary to break a filibuster to a simple majority of 51, and would 
drive a stake through the heart of the Senate's long-standing 
commitment -- indeed one of its founding purposes -- to defending 
the rights of the minority. 

This scorched-earth approach is entirely in keeping with what Time 
magazine lauds this week as President Bush's "ten-gallon-hat 
leadership" style -- a my-way-or-the-highway approach rooted in 
arrogance and laced with an intolerance of dissent that has already 
delivered him a rubber-stamp Cabinet. Now he wants a rubber-
stamp Senate. 

Over the course of Bush's first term, 204 of his judicial nominees 
received Senate approval; just 10 were blocked. This is the highest 
number of lower-court confirmations any president has had in his 
first term since 1980, including President Reagan. But, apparently, 
the highest is not enough. This president wants total approval of his 
every wish. One small problem: That's not the way the Founding 
Fathers designed things. They had these funny notions about three 
separate but equal branches of government, free and open debate, 
and the value of checks and balances to ward off overreaching for 
power by those in the majority. They built an entire system of 
government to counteract the abuse that inevitably goes with 
overreaching. 

Yet that is precisely what the plan to do away with judicial filibusters 
is: an out-and-out power grab by the president and his 
congressional accomplices. It's an underhanded scheme to 
kneecap the Constitution and take away the only weapon 
vanquished Democrats are left with to defend against Bush's "ten-
gallon-hat" juggernaut. 

It would be impossible to overstate the importance of this battle. It is 
nothing less than a fight for the soul of our democracy -- for what 
kind of country we want to live in. 

"George W. Bush," Ralph Neas, president of People for the 
American Way, told me, "has made it clear, both through his public 
comments and through the judges he has nominated to appellate 
courts, that he is committed to advancing an ideological agenda that 
would roll back many of the social and legal gains of the last 
century." 

According to Neas, who has been at the forefront of judicial battles 
since the fight against Robert Bork in 1987, this is not just about 
Roe vs. Wade -- it's also about turning the clock back to a time 
when states' rights and property rights trumped the protection of 
individual liberties and the ability of Congress to act in the common 
good on issues as far-ranging as civil rights enforcement, 
environmental protection, and worker health and safety. 

This is not overheated partisan rhetoric but a realistic appraisal of 
the rulings handed down by the federal judges Bush has already 
appointed -- and of the written opinions of Antonin Scalia and 
Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court justices the president has 
cited as his models for future nominees to the high court. "Courting 
Disaster 2004," a study by the People for the American Way 
Foundation, found that adding just one or two Scalia/Thomas clones 
to the Supreme Court would put at risk more than 100 precedents 
and the legal protections they safeguard. 

We're talking about the Voting Rights Act, affirmative action, worker 
protections, access to contraceptives and legal abortions, laws 
protecting our clean air and drinking water, and on and on. 
Senate rules regarding filibusters are not something most 
Americans will find themselves discussing over a glass of eggnog 
during the holidays. But the impact these rules can have on our lives 
is staggering. And that must be made clear right now -- not when 
Chief Justice William Rehnquist resigns and Cheney and Frist team 
up to push the nuclear button. By then it will be much too late, and 
all incoming Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid will be able to do is 
duck and cover. True leadership is being able to see not just the 
crisis staring you in the face but the one lurking just around the 
corner. 

President Bush is pulling on his oversize Stetson and gearing up for 
battle. And here, unlike in Iraq, he's making sure his political troops 
have all the armor they need. The Democrats need to preemptively 
launch an all-out campaign to educate the American people about 
what is at stake in the coming assault on our democratic values. 
If they succeed, they will have the public with them, even if it 
becomes necessary to resort to threats of mutually assured 
legislative destruction. Let's hope that's not what it will take to 
protect the Senate, the Constitution and over 65 years of hard-won 
social victories from the GOP's looming nuclear winter. 


About the writer
Arianna Huffington is a nationally syndicated columnist, the co-host 
of the National Public Radio program "Left, Right, and Center," and 
the author of 10 books. Her latest is "Fanatics and Fools: The Game 
Plan for Winning Back America."
 


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