John Kyl’s Profound Respect for Tradition
By John Kyl, April 2005: “For 214 years it has been the tradition of the Senate to approve judicial nominees by a majority vote. Many of our judges and, for example, Clarence Thomas, people might recall, was approved by either fifty-one or fifty-two votes as I recall. It has never been the rule that a candidate for judgeship that had majority support [nice dodge to write the Abe Fortas filibuster out of history!–ed.] was denied the ability to be confirmed once before the Senate. It has never happened before. So we’re not changing the rules in the middle of the game. We’re restoring the 214-year tradition of the Senate because in the last two years Democrats have begun to use this filibuster…This is strictly about whether or not a minority of senators is going to prevent the president from being able to name and get confirmed judges that he chooses after he’s been elected by the American people. And it’s never been the case until the last two years that a minority could dictate to the majority what they could do.”
John Kyl, this week: “Kyl said if Obama goes with empathetic judges who do not base their decisions on the rule of law and legal precedents but instead the factors in each case, he would try to block those picks via filibuster. [What does this even mean? How can judges apply law and precedent without considering particular facts of the case?–ed.]”
That didn’t take long! I suspect that Andy McCarthy is about to re-discover that the Constitution does, in fact, permit filibusters within a couple months as well. As, I’m sure, will George Will.