Filibustin'

Aaron sent me a hyperlink this morning to a cite where you can sign a petition supporting a filibuster of the nominee of Judge Alito:

http://www.johnkerry.com/action/filibuster/

I told him that, as much as I hate the man's politics, I don't think a filibuster is fairplay. We lost the election and there's no denying he's "paper" qualified. We just gotta take our lumps.

Here is Aaron's response:

I don't think you're wrong that there are consequences to losing the election and I agree that he is "qualified" from a education and practice standpoint. I guess I'm looking at this from a different prism.

Let's start here, we've reached a point where we don't get ANY substantive answers from nominees. As a result, the process is, and will continue to be, politically based. Whether or not it should or shouldn't be is irrelevant. It is. What we have to go on is ideology and the best interest of the country, or at least ideology consistent with the majority of the country (I'm not saying that's mine, which is clearly a bit left of the majority).

This is not a cabinet appointment where the President should get broad deference to appoint "his" people; this is a lifetime appointment with significant consequences. Traditionally, the Senate has been less deferential to a Presidents Supreme Court nominees versus something like cabinet appointments. And traditionally, the President involves the Senate in the selection process. The Senate "is perhaps most acutely attentive to its [advise and consent] duty when it considers a nominee to the Supreme Court. That this is so reflects not only the importance of our Nation's highest tribunal, but also our recognition that while Members of the Congress and Presidents come and go . . ., the tenure of a Supreme Court Justice can span generations." Sen. Moynihan during Senate debate on nomination of Ruth Bader Ginsberg. In other words, two CO-EQUAL branches of government are constitutionally responsible for appointing the third. It's not the President gets his man/woman and the Senate rubber stamps him/her if he/she went to a good law school and has been on the federal bench somewhere regardless of the consequences for the rest of us.

I think you also have to take into account the current political climate. And you have to consider the fact that the nominee is clearly outside the mainstream. I voted for people too. Those people are in Congress representing my interests, not to mention the interests of approximately 50% of the country (electoral college being the joke that it is we're stuck with this result). I feel no remorse in supporting a filibuster. Bush may have been "put over the top" with the votes of a handful of conservative ideologues but the majority of people that voted for him didn't do so b/c they wanted a conservative Supreme Court. They did so b/c they though the "straight shootin' cowboy can better protect us." That's what he ran on, that's what he won on. The democrats have "pocketed" the right to filibuster. I'm not sure what in the hell you would be saving that right for if not this. If this guy were a moderate conservative, there would be no real basis for objection. He's not. He represents the ideology of a handful of citizens in this country (percentage wise). Moreover, numberous nominees have been rejected specifically b/c their politics were too extreme. And Mrs. Alito and the crying game can fucking blow me. I was crying too, crying because our country is going down the fucking drain with the likes of her "I forgot I belonged to that bigoted organization" husband. Crying at the joke that the confirmation process has become. Crying at the thought of THREE or FOUR DECADES of shifting the country back towards intolerance and trampeling on civil rights. We'll be dead by the time this can be undone.

I signed the petition.