Via Daily Kos:
Some of you who are looking at the language may wonder what some of the clauses mean. The understanding is – and we don’t think this will happen – but if an individual senator believes in the future that a filibuster is taking place under something that’s not extraordinary circumstances, we of course reserve the right to do what we could have done tomorrow which is to cast a yes vote for the constitutional option.
- Mike DeWine
But what does this mean in practice?
It means that on these 14 people....
.. now hang's the U.S. Constitution.
Frist had no choice but to accept this agreement as 14 votes is enough on either side to guarantee cloture.
In practical terms it will now be be these 14 who will have to define what "extraordinary circumstances" mean and/or whether this should allow the nuclear option to proceed.
There will also be - again practically speaking - a big incentive for this group to stick together. And so those of you who want to speculate on how this cookie is going to crumble come CJ nomination time have a close look at these names....
Republican side, Mr. McCain, Mr. Graham, John Warner, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Mike DeWine and Lincoln Chafee,
Democratic side: Mr. Lieberman, Mr. Byrd, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Daniel Inouye, Mark Pryor and Ken Salazar.
Someone needs to do the math and tell us how many of these seven Democrats need to be gotten to if Scalia is to be promoted?
al