Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Compromise this...

We here at highwayscribery tonight register our disapproval of the compromise worked out on the filibustering of judges unsuitable for the federal bench.

While the efforts of senatorial “centrists” to find common ground on the issue is admirable on its face, the true effect may only put off the inevitable.

The right wing, which wants to govern for Christians, corporations and declare cultural war on everybody else, should be stopped in its tracks and revealed for what it is. The “nuclear option” would have achieved this, up or down.

The Democrats, who in the scribe’s mind are often guilty of the (r)epublican charge that they lack ideas and are relying on obstruction, should have been able to prove otherwise, or pay the political price.

The compromise reached is one that buttresses a status quo that is largely a thing of the past.

Linda Chavez, a (r)epublican hack whom Bush nominated in 2000 to be the Secretary of (anti)-Labor, but ultimately hung out to dry, wrote a recent editorial saying the filibuster should be kept, but truly kept.

She meant that rather than requiring a senator to merely express his intention to filibuster a measure, amendment or person in order to scuttle it, that legislator should be required to go through the motions of having to talk something to death.

the scribe couldn’t agree more.

Last week, Senate minority leader Harry Reid (D-NV), demonstrated how he could gum up the works if the nuclear option were imposed, by obligating senate committees to wind up their work in two-hour morning sessions.

Apparently, “the sweetest little club in the world” has been running on a system of automatic daily courtesy that extended committee sessions to the hours deemed necessary.

That means Democrats, who have been in the unfortunate position of fighting a rear-guard action and biding their time until a change in the political winds occurs, have been extending a courtesy to (r)epublican-run committees largely hell-bent on turning the country (which was working pretty well) inside out.

That shouldn’t be. There’s not call for comity in the face of pretty Fascism. There should be tooth-and-nail fighting, there should be endless debate that buries bills and informs the other side that our founding fathers would not permit a majority to force so many bitter pills upon a minority of what are, after all, fellow countrymen.

It was an a bold stroke, this empowering the minority to shut down an institution they don’t control and the scribe guarantees that it won’t be the last time our present ruling party forces its use by the opposition.

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