On Fri, 01 May 2009 13:17:29 -0500, Ken Fortenberry
wrote:

riverman wrote:
On May 2, 1:38 am, wrote:
Immediately after Specter switches parties, Souter announces his retirement - to
be effective as soon as a replacement is in place. Unfortunately, Specter
switching sides eliminated him as the necessary potential vote to get an iffy
nominee out of committee, and it is, um, "speculated" (in the DC sense - IOW,
Specter's people first "speculated" it...) that if any midstream rule-bending is
attempted by Dems, Specter will vote "no" on principle (or at least to avoid
looking like a complete servile hypocrite, whatever one's leanings suggest to
them).

And as an aside to Ken, guess whose wisdom, fairness, bi-partisanship, good
looks, and all-around gosh-darned-wonderfulness the Dems are praising as a R
who'll vote for the best nominee regardless...? Here's a hint - it's not Phil
Graham...

HTH,
R


You rarely see a post with such innuendo and unspoken implications as
this. Nice job saying something without actually saying it, rdean! (or
is that too transluscent?)

--riverman
(BTW, what are you talking about?)

The minority on the judiciary committee can, in effect, "filibuster"
a nominee. For a vote to be taken the committee must first vote to
end debate. Under the current Senate rules, that is without any
"mid-stream rule bending", at least one member of the minority must
vote to end debate. Before Specter became a Dem it was considered
likely that he would be the member of the minority who would vote
to end debate and take a vote. Now that Specter is a Dem, his vote
is just another Dem vote and one minority vote is still needed before
they can take a vote on the nominee. The GOP members of the judiciary
committee reads like a who's who of whackjob morons: Orrin Hatch,
Charles Grassley, Jon Kyl, Jeff Sessions, John Cornyn, Tom Coburn,
Rick's true love, Lindsey Graham and a player to be named later.
Of all those whackjobs the one who is most likely to be fair-minded,
according to speculation on the Hill, is Rick's true love, Lindsey
Graham.

At least that's what I *think* he's talking about. With Rick it never
pays to assume that what is written is what he's actually talking
about. ;-)

Anyone from the left throwing stones at the GOP members, even with Sessions, of
the Committee is automatically negated by the presence of Schumer and Feinstein.
In fact, in a top-ten list of Congressional "whackjob morons," Chucky and Diane
take up a least 4 spots.

HTH,
R