Al, Al, Al

Someone needs a better producer or made hire a research assistant.

History Lesson on Filibuster and Judicial Nominations

Here is a great lesson in history on what occurred before the current battle on Judicial Nominations:

"Prior to 1996, when the Senate majority and the president were from opposing parties, senators usually deferred to the president with respect to lower-court judicial nominations. With the notable exceptions of the 1968 Fortas nomination and a failed Republican filibuster of H. Lee Sarokin in 1994, neither party filibustered the other's judicial nominations, and virtually all nominees received a hearing unless they were sent up after the presidential nominating conventions.

All this changed in 1996. Rather than openly challenge President Clinton's nominees on the floor, Republicans decided to deny them Senate Judiciary Committee hearings. Between 1996 and 2000, 20 of Bill Clinton's appeals-court nominees were denied hearings, including Elena Kagan, now dean of the Harvard Law School, and many other women and minorities. In 1999, Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch refused to hold hearings for almost six months on any of 16 circuit-court and 31 district-court nominations Clinton had sent up. Three appeals-court nominees who did manage to obtain a hearing in Clinton's second term were denied a committee vote, including Allen R. Snyder, a distinguished Washington lawyer, Clinton White House aide, and former Rehnquist law clerk, who drew lavish praise at his hearing -- but never got a committee vote. Some 45 district-court nominees were also denied hearings, and two more were afforded hearings but not a committee vote.

Even votes that did occur were often delayed for months and even years. In late 1999, New Hampshire Republican Bob Smith blocked a vote on 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals nominee Richard Paez for months by putting an anonymous hold on the nomination. When Majority Leader Trent Lott could no longer preserve the hold, Smith and 13 other Republicans tried to mount a filibuster against the vote, but cloture was voted and Paez easily confirmed. It had been over four years since his nomination.

When his tactics on the Paez and Marsha Berzon nominations (Berzon was filibustered along with Paez, more than two years after her nomination) were challenged, Smith responded with an impassioned floor speech in defense of the judicial filibuster: 'Don't pontificate on the floor of the Senate and tell me that somehow I am violating the Constitution of the United States of America by blocking a judge or filibustering a judge that I don't think deserves to be on the circuit court ... . That is my responsibility. That is my advice and consent role, and I intend to exercise it.' "

Now, if you still think Senator Frist is not full of shit, then you might just want to rethink the whole "leaving the mental institution thing."

Six Democrats?

From none to Six . That will be crowed.

Digging a Hole

The City of Mason has dug a deeper hole. Yep, that's how you attract positive feedback from bigots, appeal to their bigotry.

Classic line:

"It's sound, valid and within the constitutional provisions," Schneider said of the policy.

In 1861 so was slavery. In 1918 so was preventing women from voting. Sure, people still don't think homosexuals deserve any consideration, but actions like this, even as small as it is, are discrimination and oppressive and thanks to the CCV legal.

UPDATE 7:15PM: In hopes of driving home my point, and not beating a dead horse, let me pose this idea: What if a couple was not considered a family because they were not married in a Christian Church by an approved minister? That is the basic anti-homosexual marriage point anyway, it is about religion and its views on homosexuality. What if Mormon marriages were not considered valid? What if Jewish or Catholic or Church of Scientology marriages were written into law as invalid? I see no difference with this situation.

Employers Unite!

Bronson's column today is cliche for Conservatives. Conservatives love Corporations and somehow don't see how workers need to fight for every scrap of pay & benefits they can. They do not get profits passed to them, that goes to corporate officers and shareholders, which tend to be institutional owners. Bronson types only see the dividend checks the get or the overnight gain they after an earnings announcement. They don’t care about what the stock price will be in 5 or 10 years, because they got theirs.

Taking care of the worker should be as important as taking care of the shareholder. If we give a corporation as much power, in reality far more power, than an individual human being, then the community should be a vital concern in any choice a corporation’s officials make. Somewhere in there the customer matters too. When you lean on workers, guess what, they lean back. You can only increase the cost of health care so much before something gives.

Actions of unions are just capitalist in nature. They are offering a good and negotiate a contract to 'sell' it to the corporation. If the corporation 'overpays' then they fail and someone else will produce the goods. That should be a free-market capitalist's wet dream.

Mr. Anti-Union man should take a look at the actions of the Cincinnati FOP (a Union), and ask himself if his undying support of their effort to not only thwart the will of Cincinnati voters, but to put public safety at risk with a police slowdown all in an effort to just get a handful of supervisors a possible promotion to assistant chief, or chief.

GOP Internal Feud

The extreme right wing is willing toeat their own to create havoc in the U.S. Senate. The CCV and other right-wing Christian groups are running attack ads against Republican Senator Mike DeWine. Are moderate Republicans starting to fret over their Faustian bargain with the radical right wing of the party or have the fundamentalists just taken complete control of the party, and all varied opinion is being drum out, even sitting United States Senators with fairly mainstream Conservative views, not extreme views, which I guess makes him an enemy of the party.

Mike's son Pat is facing the same type of attack from the extreme right wing. The attack ads against Pappa DeWine could be a revenge for his alleged strong arming in local political circles, trying to get his son the GOP nomination to fill the soon to be open Congressional seat of Rob Portman.

"Thou shall not speak ill against a fellow Republican" appears to be a dying GOP Creed.

Another Reason Not to Live In Mason

Homosexuals never get a 'warm' reception in the suburbs. In Mason, public institutions hold no punches and just discriminate against them and their families.

The right wing suburban bloggers come right out of the wide open closet and embrace the discrimination: here and here.