Like all fans of tv featuring shameless loudmouths doing pointless things, I looked forward to today’s filibuster of Sam Alito with great anticipation. Maybe it’s just me, but can there be anything more entertaining than watching liberals destroy the miniscule shreds of credibility that they may have had, not to mention their electoral futures, with irrational, stream-of-consciousness brain dumps? I tuned in just in time to see Ted Kennedy in full outrage mode, waiving today’s New York Times in the air and literally screaming at the top of his lungs. What had the senator so exorcised? Did he read that he’d be forced to stay in the Senate chamber while John Kerry droned on later today? (Sure, these guys are against torturing terrorists, but then they subject innocent American C-SPAN viewers to that!) No, he read this:

“Last February, as rumors swirled about the failing health of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, a team of conservative grass-roots organizers, public relations specialists and legal strategists met to prepare a battle plan to ensure any vacancies were filled by like-minded jurists.”

David Kirkpatrick’s article describes yet another shocking and disturbing plot by the vast right-wing conspiracy, to get originalist judges appointed to the federal bench. Of course, unlike many conspiracies, this one was not covert. It was not only out in the open. It was the promised result of electing George W. Bush. Why is this news?

“Conservatives had begun planning for a nomination fight as long ago as that February meeting, which was led by Leonard A. Leo, executive vice president of the Federalist Society and informal adviser to the White House, Mr. Meese and Mr. Gray.
They laid out a two-part strategy to roll out behind whomever the president picked, people present said. The plan: first, extol the nonpartisan legal credentials of the nominee, steering the debate away from the nominee’s possible influence over hot-button issues. Second, attack the liberal groups they expected to oppose any Bush nominee.”

Senator Kennedy could barely contain his disgust and rage over the contemptible interference in the Senate’s sacred “advise and consent” responsibilities. “How dare they?” he bellowed (or words to that effect). For reasons about which can all speculate, I think the senator’s memory is a little foggy. He seems to have forgotten another recent story from the Liberal Death Star. Buried deep in the story are the following very interesting paragraphs, describing an April 2001 retreat attended by Senate democrats:

“At the retreat, Democrats listened to a panel composed of Laurence H. Tribe of Harvard Law School, Cass R. Sunstein of the University of Chicago Law School and Marcia D. Greenberger, the co-president of the National Women’s Law Center. The panelists told them that the court was at a historic juncture and that the Bush White House was prepared to fill the courts with conservatives who deserved particularly strong scrutiny, participants said.

The panel also advised them, participants said, that Democratic senators could oppose even nominees with strong credentials on the grounds that the White House was trying to push the courts in a conservative direction, a strategy that now seems to have failed the party.”

So it appears that the senator’s anger is less about sinister interference by outsiders in the judicial confirmation process and more about the fact that those who are attempting to prevent the federal courts from becoming an unaccountable, imperial super-legislature for the Left are finally fighting back. For years, the Senate democrats and their liberal activist paymasters took for granted that they could hijack the judicial confirmation process and unilaterally amend the Constitution to require 60 votes to confirm federal judges, something unheard of for over 200 years. Once the other side caught on and decided to stop being a punching bag, the liberals are furious. It’s no surprise. Everyone knows that they can’t win a fair fight on the merits, which is the very reason they are fighting like cornered rats preserve the ability for activist judges to impose their secularist, anti-family, anti-American agenda on the rest of us.

filibuster, Alito, Kennedy, New York Times, John Kerry, Conservatives, Senator, Democrats   

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