cloture

The Senate just voted 70 – 29 for cloture, meaning the nomination of David Hamilton to the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit will receive an up-or-down vote. The vote for cloture was a victory for the Obama administration and Senate Democrats who sought to push the nomination forward, and a loss for Sen. [...]

There’s growing attention today to the hypocrisy of Senate Republicans planning to filibuster the nomination of Judge David Hamilton to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and to the Obama administration’s failure to make judicial nominations a higher priority.
NPR’s Nina Totenberg this morning had an excellent roundup on the issue, while The New York Times, [...]

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, just said on the Senate floor that he will vote against cloture on the nomination of David Hamilton, the district court judge in Indiana nominated to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
Sessions earlier wrote a letter to his colleagues urging them to oppose [...]

This seems to have flown mostly under the radar, but on Tuesday, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), one of the sharpest Democratic critics of a public option, told The Huffington Post that she would probably not support a GOP filibuster of a health care bill that contained a public plan.
“I’m not right now inclined to support [...]

Even if he ultimately opposes health reform legislation, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) says he would probably vote to bring the bill to the floor, reports The New Haven Register:
U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, I-Conn., whose vote could be crucial to breaking an expected GOP filibuster on health care legislation, Thursday said he would consider voting [...]

There will be no cloture vote on a $245 billion proposal to prevent pay cuts to Medicare doctors, according to the office of Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), who sponsored the bill.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) filed a motion yesterday to hold a cloture vote on the bill Monday — the procedural move required to [...]

The Washington Post’s story today about liberals who are frustrated that the Obama administration isn’t pressing harder to win confirmation for liberal-leaning judges to the federal courts should also serve as a reminder that there are a whole lot of key Justice Department posts still not confirmed yet, either. Whether that’s because the White House [...]

Conservatives see victory in the stalled nomination of a normally uncontroversial post.

In a move that all but ensures the Senate passage of the $838 billion stimulus compromise, Senate lawmakers this evening voted to end a GOP filibuster of the upper chamber’s bill, pounded out by a group of moderates late last week.
The count was 61 to 36, with almost every Republican voting against the bill. Sen. [...]