Senator Far Right Incinerates Senate Tradition

Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. said, "Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist today took a first tragic step down a clear path that he, both parties and the American people will soon live to regret - removing a 214-year Senate tradition of protecting unlimited debate, minority rights, the principle of `checks and balances' and the idea of `advice and consent.' Senator Frist caved in to the far right in his party in order to pursue his own political ambition to be the Republican Party's presidential nominee in 2008. That's why he shall forever be dubbed Senator Far Right Incinerates Senate Tradition!

"Senator Frist's strategy is to provoke, in short order, one or more Democratic filibusters and use them as an excuse to employ a parliamentary scheme to eliminate the filibuster on President Bush's judicial nominees. And it's not even about the current judicial nominees. It's about whether extremist right wing judges will later - possibly as early as this summer - be able to get through the Senate to the U.S. Supreme Court. This action by Senator Frist will trigger the so-called nuclear option that will bring the work of the American people conducted in the Senate to a crawl.

"Hypocrisy is at the heart of Senator Frist's move. He's complaining that 10 of President Bush's judicial nominees have been blocked from an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor. But he conveniently overlooks the fact that 207 of Bush's nominees have been confirmed or that a Republican-controlled Judiciary Committee during the Clinton years didn't even have the courtesy of giving more than 60 of Clinton's nominees a hearing in committee much less a vote on the Senate floor. It was the Republicans stealthy way of killing Clinton's moderate judicial nominees.

"Are Janice Rogers Brown's and Priscilla Owen's views out of the mainstream? Janice Rogers Brown argues that the `Revolution of 1937,' when the Supreme Court began to consistently rule in support of New Deal legislation, was a `disaster' that marked the triumph of our `socialist revolution.' Brown is opposed to the minimum wage and is blindly pro-business. Current strong conservative Attorney General Albert Gonzales when he served with Priscilla Owen on the Texas Supreme Court said of ulta-conservative Owen that she ignored the plain meaning of the law or otherwise engaged in improper judicial activism to try to reach a particular result. She also refused to recognize the legal principle of stare decisis or precedent in deciding cases. There are numerous other statements and issues where both nominees express or have similar extremist views. You be the judge if they're outside the mainstream," Jackson concluded.