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April 02, 2003
So Much for Judicial Tradition
Republicans have made much of the "unprecedented" filibuster of Estrada (not so unprecedented as they argue of course). But now the Senate Judiciary has approved a nominee despite opposition from both Senators from the nominees home state, a clear abandonment of the "blue slip" tradition of home state vetoes.
Now, all these traditions are of course up for grabs, but the GOP better get off their hypocrisy high-horse and just admit that they conducted total partisan warfare against Clinton's nominees when they controlled the Judiciary committee, that Bush continues partisanship in his rightwing nominations, and the Democrats are just engaging in similar partisanship in their filibusters.
So it returns to politics. Do we want rightwing judges or not? Let's get off this "competence" rhetoric-- there are thousands of competent people NOT being nominated, so the question is why should these particular nominees get the job. And that comes down to ideology -- why they were picked -- and ideology -- why the Dems will filibuster a lot of them.
Posted by Nathan at April 2, 2003 02:10 PM
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