Filibuster

“If they had been pulling out all the stops and working as hard as possible to get as many nominations as fast possible,” said former associate counsel in the Bush White House Rachel Brand, “they might have done the same as us.”

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 [...]

While one group of leading conservatives is pressing Republican senators to filibuster Obama’s nominee for a seat on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, others are opposing the filibuster attempt.
The Hill reports that 24 leading conservative, led by former Reagan administration Attorney General Edwin Meese, have signed a memo urging a fillibuster, saying “Judge [David] [...]

Alexander Bolton has an important story in the The Hill about conservative division — polite so far — over whether the party’s stalwart Senate minority should be employing so many filibusters of Obama nominees. The main opposition is coming from Manny Miranda, who wants Republicans to use filibusters to actually force lengthy debates on nominees. [...]

Eight months ago, President Obama nominated Indiana judge David Hamilton for a seat on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. As Jeffrey Toobin reported, it was an uncontroversial, Republican-backed choice intended to “begin a profound and rapid change in the confirmation process and in the federal judiciary itself.”
Eight months later, Republicans are still filibustering Hamilton, [...]

I usually ignore partisan Web videos that aren’t backed by real media buys, but this one out today from the Republican National Committee, a sequel to this one, is fascinating in its convoluted logic.
It goes like this. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the RNC reminds us (three times!) once said that he voted for $87 billion [...]

Congress this year is on a tear against bad behavior in the corporate world. Lawmakers have passed credit card reforms to protect Americans from the worst abuses of the big banks; they’re moving now on health reforms to protect Americans from the worst practices of the insurance industry; they’re pushing new finance regulations to protect [...]

Sen. Ben Nelson, the conservative-leaning Nebraska Democrat, vowed to filibuster health reform legislation if it includes a public health insurance plan, ABC News reported yesterday.

“Well, first of all, it has more than a robust public option, it’s got a totally government-run plan, the costs are extraordinary associated with it, it increases taxes in a way [...]