UP or Down VOTE!!!

[Nutmegger]

It's time for up-or-down vote By Bill Frist

All 100 members of the U.S. Senate will soon decide a basic question of fairness. Will we permit a fair, up-or-down vote on every judicial nominee? Or, will we create an unprecedented 60-vote requirement for the confirmation of President Bush's judges? I sincerely hope that it is the former.

Our Constitution grants the Senate the power to confirm or reject the president's judicial nominees. In exercising this duty, the Senate has always followed a careful and deliberate process of examining the nominees through hearings, discussing their merits in committee, debating them in the full Senate and then coming to an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor. We investigate, we debate, and then we decide.

Beginning in 2003, however, the Senate stopped deciding. Until then, every judicial nominee who cleared the Senate's committee process received the courtesy of that vote. Some nominees were rejected on the floor, but they always received that vote. A few years ago, however, Senate Democrats began blocking final votes on judicial nominations. They began to filibuster.

These filibusters of judicial nominations injure the administration of justice and our nation's political culture. Some courthouses have sat empty for many years, even though a bipartisan majority of senators stands ready to fill the vacancies by confirming the president's nominees. And as every American knows, the political wrangling over this issue has become less and less civil with every passing day.

The GOP Demanded on An "Up or Down Vote" on Hack Republican Judges. Why Won't They Give One to Save Our GIs?

Any Republican or Democrat in Congress or the White House who supports a war that is only running on the fuel of failed leadership and GOP solidarity should go and fight in it, instead of mouthing lies about "supporting our troops."

During the skirmishes over Bush’s appointment of radical GOP partisan judges to the Supreme Court, the White House sent out a message point: "An up or down vote." In fact, then GOP Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (who must have had a skeleton in his closet for him to disappear from political life so precipitously) threatened to end the time-honored filibuster in the Senate to give the Bush judicial hit men an "up or down vote."

Only the intervention of a small group of GOP Dems who teamed up with "moderate" Republicans prevented Frist from "bombing" the filibuster by eliminating it with a majority vote. Essentially, the "centrist" GOP Dems gave the Republicans what they wanted (it’s called capitulation) – and Bush got Alito and other "Constitutional Revisionist" (forget that misleading "framing" claim that they are "Strict Constructionists") judges on the federal bench.

Now, it’s a short time later and the Republicans won’t even allow a vote on saving the lives of our troops. They even, just last week, filibustered a bill sponsored by Senator James Webb that would have simply required that the troops be combat ready!

An Up-or-Down Vote?

WHILE REPUBLICAN senators insist on prompt votes for every judicial nominee, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) has placed a "hold" on President Bush's nomination of Julie Finley as ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Mrs. Finley is well qualified. Like many ambassadorial appointees, she has been a major Republican fundraiser, but she has also been a strong and active advocate in Washington for the expansion of NATO, the integration of Turkey into the European Union and the spread of democracy to countries of the former Soviet Union. These are issues that would be central in her new post -- and issues that Mr. Brownback also has highlighted. Nevertheless, Mr. Brownback, a possible presidential candidate in 2008, as of last night was employing a parliamentary maneuver to block any Senate vote -- on the grounds that Mrs. Finley is pro-choice on abortion.

The move may please Republican anti abortion activists, who have launched a campaign against Mrs. Finley, demanding that the president withdraw her nomination. But the hold is repugnant, on both procedural and substantive grounds. If a filibuster is at best a controversial way of deciding policy, allowing a single senator to have effective say over whether to hold a vote on a particular presidential appointment would seem completely unacceptable.

Up or down vote! Up or down vote!!

[babylonsister]

1. If it was good enough for them, it's good enough for us! nt

[ClassWarrior]

2. As another DUer said, "the upperdown-vote."

:eyes:

NGU.

[Coexist]

3. upordownvote upordownvote

upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote upordownvote ... DAMMIT.

[globalvillage]

4. Uperdown

The video is from one bush speech.

http://tinyurl.com/2qrdac

[babylonsister]

5. Oh, gv, that deserves its own thread! nt

[globalvillage]

6. It's striking to see it all together, isn't it?

And that was just one speech. Hypocrites. Bunch of freaking hypocrites.