Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Frist Confronts His Inner Hypocrite
Posted by Bruce Barry on Wed, May 18, 2005 at 1:58 PM
On the U.S. Senate floor this morning, as the pre-nuclear debate on judicial nominations began, Bill Frist was invited to own up to the transparent dishonesty of his own support for a judicial filibuster when Clinton was president (via Think Progress):
Translation of this incomprehensible bunkum: It's okey dokey when I do it, but unconstitutional when you do it.
(UPDATE: Watch the exchange on video; thanks JS for the link. Transcript above slightly corrected at 4:30 pm to match the video.)
SEN. SCHUMER: Isn't it correct that on March 8 of 2000, my friend from Tennessee [Sen. Frist] voted to uphold a filibuster of Richard Paez?
SEN. FRIST: The president, the um, in response, uh, the Paez nomination - we'll come back and discuss it further, and actually I'd like to come back to the floor and discuss it, and it really brings to, to I believe - a point - what is the issue, and the issue is we have leadership-led partisan filibusters that have obstructed, not one nominee, but two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, in a routine way. The issue is not cloture votes per se, it's the partisan, leadership-led use of cloture votes to kill - to defeat - to assassinate these nominees. And that's the difference. Cloture has been used in the past on this floor to postpone, to get more information, to ask further questions.
Translation of this incomprehensible bunkum: It's okey dokey when I do it, but unconstitutional when you do it.
(UPDATE: Watch the exchange on video; thanks JS for the link. Transcript above slightly corrected at 4:30 pm to match the video.)
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