Clean Cut Kid gives us a version of a chart now circulating, purporting to show how many times the Republicans filibustered Clinton nominees to the judiciary. The chart is a rough transliteration of evidence produced by Senator Dianne Feinstein. I believe the chart originates at this site. The point, presumably, is that the Democrats haven't changed the rules at all by filibustering Bush's nominees, because the Republicans did it all the time. But the chart and/or the speech is as shameless a device as one sees in contemporary politics, and that's saying a lot. It makes its case by using words to mean something they had never meant before.
According to the latter site, Senator Feinstein begins by asking this question:
Which is better, a filibuster by 40
Members on the floor openly declared, publicly debating, discussing an
individual's past speeches, an individual's temperament, character,
opinions, or a filibuster in secret when one does not know who or why?
What does Feinstein mean by a "filibuster in secret"? The first two examples tell. Clarence Sundram
was simply killed in committee by a filibuster of one
or two, or the chairman's decision not to bring the nomination to the
floor.
Whatever happened in committee, it couldn't have been a filibuster. A filibuster is a device used to block a vote on the Senate floor, not a vote in any committee. The common term for bottling up some action in committee is pigeon-holing. Feinstein is here deliberately distorting the language to prove here point. One could as legitimately prove that pigs fly by redefining eagles as hogs. Or to put it differently, Feinstein is lying.
The second example mentions Jesse Helms blocks a nominees, presumably by not "returning the blue slip." This tradition allows a Senator to block a nominee from his home state. Again, this is not what anyone ever meant by the term "filibuster", until Feinstein decided to work some Bill Clinton mojo on the language.
A quick survey suggests that all or almost all of the examples produced by Feinstein fall into one of the two categories mentioned above.
A filibuster is a device by which a minority can block a vote on the Senate floor by refusing to end debate. A filibuster begins when some group of Senators announces to the chair that they intend to filibuster, or when a vote of cloture has failed. This device differs from the others mentioned above in significant ways.
The hold a Senator can put on nominees from his own state is one of those long standing privileges of the upper house. It can surely be misused, and perhaps it was so misused by Jesse Helms, but this was squarely within tradition. Were a great number of Senators to try to block nominees by using this power, that would be a serious threat to the nomination process, and surely it would be recognized as a departure from tradition.
Blocking a vote in committee is central to the process whereby Congress works and has always worked. A sensible person could argue that, in the case of nomination, committees should be forced to issue a report, favorable or no, so that the Senate can vote. But the committees are scale models of the Senate as a whole: the majority party in the Senate has a majority on the Senate judiciary committee. If the majority is united, the minority members cannot block a nomination. This is another reason why this is unlike a filibuster.
For the minority to use the filibuster to systematically block judicial nominations may be a good idea or a bad idea, but it is without precedent in the history of the Senate. Feinstein's speech is patently dishonest. But this is hardly unprecedented in this debate. When the Democrats defeated a cloture vote on the Bolton nomination, Senator Dodd sent a letter to his fellow Democrats insisting that this was not a filibuster. But if a cloture vote has failed, that is the very definition of a filibuster.
If the Democrats really believed they were in the right, they would not have to be persistent telling lies about the meaning of words.
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