Americans are either excitedly or nervously awaiting the day when President Bush will nominate his first U.S. Supreme Court justice and the monstrous congressional battle that will surely follow. The battle for the highest court in the land might be won or lost long before any justice on the Rehnquist Court steps down from their lifetime post.
Recent moves by conservatives suggest they are contemplating a bureaucratic dirty trick known as “the nuclear option” to dismantle the 200-year-old use of filibusters in the Senate. It currently takes 60 votes to end a filibuster (the GOP has 55 seats in the
Senate), which forces a narrow majority to work with a narrow minority in certain important matters, like with judicial nominations. Senate Democrats have filibustered 10 Bush nominees and confirmed more than 200 to district and appellate courts due to concerns that they were ideologically extreme and unfit to be judges.
The GOP has not been able to muster the 60 votes it needs to end the filibuster on these nominees and force an up or down vote. Rather than find judges who are less extreme, some Republicans are pushing to change the rules so that a simple majority could end a filibuster. If this so-called “nuclear option” is successful, one of the only checks and balances to the power of the Republican Party, which controls both the White House and Congress, would disappear, as would our best chance of keeping a radical Christian right-winger off the Supreme Court.
Appointing one or two more justices in the mold of the insane Justice Scalia is the top priority of the Christian right and President Bush. Getting his ultra-conservative nominees onto the federal courts would pave the way to getting ultra-conservatives on the High Court. The repercussions of this would be felt for a lifetime.
The majority of Americans feel that Democrats should be allowed to filibuster judicial nominations, 48 percent to 39 percent, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. But the question that really matters is: Does the GOP have the votes in the Senate to execute the nuclear option? It is difficult to say. According to Congressional Quarterly, two Republicans, Sen. Lincoln Chafee and Sen. John McCain, disagree with the rule change. Two other Republicans, Sen. Susan Collins and Sen. John Warner, have expressed strong reservations. Assuming they both break ranks, and assuming no Democrats do (which is a big assumption given the spineless Democratic Party), the fate of the nuclear option could rest on a single Republican vote.
That vote could be Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith. He has publicly stated that he is undecided about the issue. Please write the senator and let him know the majority of his constituents, just like the majority of Americans, want the filibuster rules left alone. If you do only one political act this year, this is the one. The fate of the Supreme Court and many of the laws we consider central to the American way of life are currently hanging in the balance.
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