Frist, "nuclear option", "tyranny of the minority? ??

[pinkpops]

Looking at the Post article -

GOP Is Ready for Filibuster Battle
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59877-2004Dec12.html

I see the quote

"One way or another, the filibuster of judicial nominees must end,'he said in a speech to the Federalist Society last month, labeling the use of filibusters against judicial nominees a 'formula for tyranny by the minority."

tyranny by the MINORITY is it?

Of course the tyranny of the MAJORITY concept is well known, originating with John Stuart Mill -

"Here's what Mill writes in the Introduction to On Liberty about the tyranny of the majority:


Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant — society collectively over the separate individuals who compose it — its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates; and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development and, if possible, prevent the formation of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs as protection against political despotism. — On Liberty, The Library of Liberal Arts edition, p.7."

http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/jsmill.htm


I did some snooping on the net, found other references to MINORITY
tyranny, most of which referred to the minority which is in fact running the country due to lack of backbone among press and politicians.

[Maccagirl]

1. I'm sure the Reagan Judical Diaper Brigade

he spoke to was eating it up. Irony is so lost on it's subjects.


:puke: