The Fairness Option

Philip Terzian writes in the Weekly Standard about the filibuster and it's true history (unlike what the Dems and the media have been telling you):

Listening to Democrats and reading editorial commentary, some Americans might think that the three-fifths Senate vote required to end debate was dictated by James Madison on his deathbed. Hardly.

THE SENATE MAJORITY LEADER, Bill Frist, and his Republican colleagues, face a momentous decision: Do they allow the Democratic minority to prevent the Senate from voting on judicial nominees, or do they invoke the "nuclear option"--that is, change the rules so a simple majority of 51 can force a vote?

For the past few months, Frist has been applying public pressure: first, by routinely complaining about the Democratic filibuster against President Bush's nominees for the federal appellate bench; and second, by suggesting that "all options are on the table." Frist's threats have not impressed Democrats, who see no benefit in curtailing their obstructionist tactics. From their point of view, talking nominees to death keeps conservatives out of the federal judiciary, and weakens the Bush administration. And Democrats argue that changing Senate rules would injure the spirit of harmony on Capitol Hill.

Excuse us for a moment while we gag over that one. Simply stated, it is the Democrats who have violated the standards of behavior in this episode. They have maligned distinguished, well-qualified judges with whom they disagree as "radical" and "outside the mainstream" of judicial thought when it is, in fact, the Democrats who hover at the fringes of extremism. Senate minority leader Harry Reid has a soft voice and professorial manner, but he is an accomplished name-caller (Alan Greenspan is "one of the biggest political hacks we have in Washington") and seldom hesitates to misrepresent the views of judicial nominees. It's impossible to reconcile the ideal of comity with summarily denying nominees the courtesy of an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor.

And a little history lesson:

It is true that the filibuster preserves one option for the minority against the rule of the majority party, and may allow a minority to focus the attention of the country on momentous issues before the Senate acts. But it is also worth noting that this procedure has not always been used for constructive purposes. In recent times, the filibuster was used most promiscuously to frustrate civil-rights legislation: In 1957 Strom Thurmond held the floor for 24 hours for that purpose--a record which still stands--and in 1964, 18 Democrats and one Republican blocked the Civil Rights Act for two-and-a-half months.

We need to make people understand that filibustering judicial nominees is not in the Constitution, nor is it the tradition in the Senate. It's a new procedure, instituted by the Dems in the last Congress, for the express purpose of keeping conservatives, and especially religious conservatives, off the federal bench.