[Mb-civic] Legislative Bomb...and Barbara Boxer on Earth Day

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

With the Senate Republican leadership edging closer to actually 
seeking to get rid of the filibuster--the minority party's last check on 
extreme abuse of power by the majority--it would do well for us all to 
read this editorial from the Nation and then to call our Senators--
Democrat or Republican--and demand that they stop Senate majority 
leader Bill Frist from "nuking" our government....

Following this editorial you can read Barbara Boxer's Earth Day 
comments...



http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050425&s=editors

Legislative Bomb

[from the April 25, 2005 issue]

Seventy-four percent of Americans surveyed by CBS News said 
Congress intervened in the Terri Schiavo right-to-die case to advance 
a political agenda, not because they cared what happened to the 
Florida woman whose last days took center ring in a grotesque 
national media circus. The people called it accurately, as right-wingers 
on Capitol Hill confirmed with incendiary reactions to Schiavo's death. 
"The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their 
behavior,'' snarled House majority leader Tom DeLay; GOP Senator 
John Cornyn wondered aloud on the Senate floor whether there was a 
connection between the "perception" that judges are making political 
decisions and the fact that "some people...engage in violence." Both 
DeLay and Cornyn took some appropriate hits for playing to the worst 
instincts of a country where in recent months judges and their families 
have been the targets of violence. But few in Washington were 
confused about the meaning of DeLay's warning: While he might muse 
about impeaching federal jurists, his real passion is for removing 
barriers to the Bush Administration's campaign to pack the courts with 
right-wing judicial activists.

DeLay has made no secret of his desire to "go nuclear" in the fight 
over judicial nominations, and Senate majority leader Bill Frist, another 
Schiavo interventionist, shares his enthusiasm for blowing up the rules 
that allow a minority of senators to use a filibuster--best understood as 
the unlimited extension of debate--to block controversial judicial 
nominations. During Bush's first term, when the Senate flipped back 
and forth between Republican and Democratic control, Democrats 
managed to derail ten of the Administration's 229 nominees for federal 
judgeships--in Judiciary Committee votes when the Democrats 
controlled the committee and later, when Republicans took charge, 
with filibusters. Among those blocked were Bush's most extreme picks 
for federal appeals court benches in the West and South, such as 
California Supreme Court Justice Janice Brown, who argues that the 
First Amendment permits corporations to make false or misleading 
representations without legal ramifications, and Texas Supreme Court 
Justice Priscilla Owen, whose moves to undermine protections for 
women seeking abortions were so radical that another justice, right-
winger Alberto Gonzales (now US Attorney General), decried them as 
an "unconscionable act of judicial activism."

With Republicans more firmly in control of the Senate after the 2004 
elections, Bush has resubmitted the names of Brown, Owen and five 
more blocked nominees. Even with the Senate split fifty-five to forty-
five, Democrats still have the forty votes needed to maintain a 
filibuster. But Republican leaders in the Senate, including Frist, are so 
determined to satisfy the Administration and their party's social 
conservative base that they have signaled their willingness to invoke 
the "nuclear option" of radically rewriting the Senate's rules to make 
filibusters of judicial nominees virtually impossible. So the fight is on, 
not just to save a Senate rule but to maintain this country's already 
compromised system of checks and balances on executive and 
legislative overreach.

The filibuster takes its name from the Dutch word for "pirate," and it 
has long been associated with a buccaneering approach to the 
legislative process. Dissident minority senators have historically tossed 
the final roadblock of the filibuster in the way of nominations or laws 
they could not prevent in any other manner. As with most tools, the 
filibuster can be used for good or ill. For every Paul Wellstone 
filibustering to block a corrupt bankruptcy "reform," there was a Strom 
Thurmond filibustering to slow the civil rights movement. Unlimited 
debate was allowed until 1917, when President Wilson, worried about 
the prospect of antiwar senators like Robert La Follette using the 
filibuster to challenge his rush to enter World War I, prevailed upon the 
Senate to adopt a rule allowing two-thirds of senators to vote to end a 
filibuster. In 1975 the ratio was modified to three-fifths, or sixty votes, 
where it has remained. But there has rarely been serious discussion 
about eliminating the filibuster until now.

If the nuclear option is invoked, Congress will become an altered 
branch of government. In the absence of rules that require the 
consideration of minority views and values, the Senate will become 
little different from the House, where the party out of power is reduced 
almost to observer status. That's why Robert Byrd, dean of the Senate 
and the most ardent champion of the chamber's rules, called the 
nuclear option "a legislative bomb that threatens the rights to dissent, 
to unlimited debate and to freedom of speech."

The nuclear option could take a variety of forms. Under the most likely 
scenario, Vice President Cheney, president of the Senate, would rule 
that filibusters against judicial nominees are unconstitutional. If a bare 
majority of the Senate upheld the move, such filibusters would for all 
practical purposes be eliminated, and only fifty-one votes would be 
needed to approve a nominee. Democrats would effectively lose their 
last tool for blocking Bush choices not just for the lower courts but also 
for the Supreme Court seats that are all but certain to open before his 
term ends.

If the filibuster survives in its current form, Democrats will be credited 
with a significant legislative victory--keeping the process open for the 
Supreme Court nomination fights, during which the GOP would have a 
hard time changing the rules. But there aren't enough Democratic 
senators to prevent Frist & Co. from going nuclear. The "no nukes" 
camp must be expanded to include at least a handful of Republicans. 
It makes sense to begin with the GOP's dwindling circle of moderates: 
Maine's Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, Rhode Island's Lincoln 
Chafee, Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter, Indiana's Richard Lugar. If ever 
there was a time when thinking Republicans needed to separate 
themselves from their party's jihadist wing, this is it. But it makes just 
as much sense to pressure conscientious conservatives. Already two 
former GOP senators with pristine conservative pedigrees, James 
McClure of Idaho and Malcolm Wallop of Wyoming, have argued in a 
Wall Street Journal op-ed that going the nuclear route could mean the 
end of the Senate as "a continuing body with continuing rules."

While Frist and his allies claim they only want to change the rules for 
consideration of judicial nominations, McClure and Wallop argue that 
"it is naïve to think that what is done to the judicial filibuster will not 
later be done to its legislative counterpart." They add, "Without the 
possibility of a filibuster, a future majority leader could bring up 
objectionable international commitments with only an hour or two for 
debate, hardly enough time for opponents to inform the public and rally 
the citizenry against ratification."

The abuses that McClure and Wallop fear ought not to be the concern 
merely of Democrats and retired Republican senators; current GOP 
senators who presume to speak for more than the narrowest and most 
partisan wing of their party--people like Arizona Senator John McCain--
have a responsibility to speak up. That is most likely to happen if they 
hear a loud call along the following lines from their constituents: This is 
not an issue of Republican versus Democrat, nor even liberal versus 
conservative; this is a moment when we decide whether this country 
will remain a democracy in which those who govern must play by the 
rules, or will become a winner-take-all system where the gravest fear 
of the founders--tyranny of the majority--will be the lasting legacy of 
George W. Bush, Tom DeLay and Bill Frist.

-------


STATEMENT BY U.S. SENATOR BARBARA BOXER ON 
EARTH DAY
April 22, 2005

Each Spring we commemorate Earth Day, a celebration of our
environmental accomplishments as well as a renewal of our
commitment to protecting the Earth for our generation, our
children and our grandchildren.  Since Earth Day was founded in
1970, our country has taken many strides towards protecting
public health and environmental resources, from the Clean Air
Act to the Safe Drinking Water Act.

But today, 35 years after the first Earth Day, America’s
environmental legacy is quickly unraveling and special
interests are gaining more power in Washington.  In the past
several years, nearly 400 laws and regulations that protect our
public health and environment have been rolled back.

The energy interests have fought to undercut the Clean Air Act,
persuading the EPA to allow high levels of mercury emissions
into the environment.  This rollback fails to protect the
health of the American people, particularly America’s children.
We know that maternal consumption of unsafe levels of mercury
in fish can cause neurodevelopmental harm in children,
resulting in learning disabilities, poor motor function, mental
retardation, seizures, and cerebral palsy.

Oil companies are working to open one of the this country’s
most beautiful wild treasures – the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge –  to drilling.  Sadly, they are willing to exploit this
treasure for only a few month’s worth of oil at best.    

Other special interests have fought to allow companies that
cause toxic pollution to get away with not cleaning up their
mess.  All across America, 70 million people - and 10 million
children - live within four miles of a toxic Superfund site. 
These polluters leave toxic messes in our communities and then
make the American people pay for the mess – with both their
health and their money.  The polluters should pay to clean up
Superfund sites, not American taxpayers.  

The special interests that produce pesticides even sponsored an
EPA study called “CHEERS” to test pesticides on children. 
Fortunately, Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) and I were successful
in convincing the EPA to cancel the program. 

One common denominator for all these rollbacks is that time and
again special interests have put short-sighted considerations
above the interests of all Americans.  We cannot afford to
continue down this path.  If we put off until tomorrow what
should be done today, can you imagine the extraordinary
economic, environmental and health costs?  By delaying sound
environmental policy now, these special interest groups are
shifting an environmental deficit to our children and
grandchildren.

Recently, there has been a lot of talk about “moral values.”  I
cannot think of a more moral issue than ensuring that every
American has access to the basics ingredients of life – clean
air and safe water.  

Regardless of your political affiliation or economic status,
you are affected by environmental hazards: by lead or mercury
in water, by the smog in the air and by toxins in the food you
eat.  Whether you are the President of the United States, a
farmer in Kansas or a CEO in New York, you are affected by the
health of the environment.  The health of the environment
concerns all Americans.  

Over 1,500 years ago, the great rabbis wrote, “When God created
the first man, He took him around to all the trees in the
Garden of Eden and said to him ‘See my handiwork, how beautiful
and choice they are... Be careful not to ruin and destroy my
world, for if you do ruin it, there is no one to repair it
after you.’”

This Earth Day, let’s make a commitment to ensure our children
and grandchildren inherit a healthy, livable world.

On my Senate website www.boxer.senate.gov/earthday, I have
prepared an Earth Day feature page which lists Earth Day events
in communities throughout California, a history of Earth Day,
and some fascinating facts about our Earth and its environment.


===================================================

For more information on Senator Boxer's record and other
information, please go to: http://www.boxer.senate.gov

If you would like to make a comment regarding this or any other
federal matter, please feel free to do so at: 
http://www.boxer.senate.gov/contact/webform.cfm



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"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
   ---   George Orwell


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