From MediaMatters:
In fact, while Democratic senators used the filibuster to block 10 of Bush's 229 first-term judicial nominees, it was Republicans who first initiated a filibuster against a judicial nominee in 1968, forcing Democratic president Lyndon Johnson to withdraw the nomination of Associate Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas to be chief justice.
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A June 29, 2003, report by the progressive advocacy organization People for the American Way (PFAW) also pointed out: "As recently as 2000, cloture votes were necessary to obtain votes on the nominations of both Richard Paez and Marsha Berzon to the Ninth Circuit." PFAW noted that current Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, now a primary critic of Democrats' opposition to Bush's judicial nominees, "was among those voting against cloture" -- in other words, supporting a filibuster -- on the Paez nomination.
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Republican-controlled Senate prevented approximately 60 of former president Bill Clinton's nominees from receiving a vote on the Senate floor, and in many cases, even a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee. And despite Democrats' opposition to a few of Bush's nominees, The Washington Post pointed out in a December 13, 2003, article that "confirmation of Bush nominees exceeds in most cases the first-term experience of presidents dating to Ronald Reagan."
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Senate Republicans under Clinton strictly enforced a "blue slip" rule, which, as The Washington Post explained, is a process in which a senator from a nominee's home state can block a nominee by failing to turn in "blue approval papers that senators are asked to submit on nominees for federal judgeships in their states."
Read the full article:
http://mediamatters.org/items/200503010003Not only have filibusters been attempted against judicial nominees in the past, but Frist himself has even voted for one. In 2000, after Senate conservatives had held up Bill Clinton's nomination of Richard Paez to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit for four years, Frist joined in an unsuccessful attempt to filibuster Paez -- a judge who was favored by a clear majority of the Senate and who won confirmation after the filibuster was broken by a vote of 59 to 39.
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Senate Democrats have relied on filibusters to block judicial nominees far more often than have minority parties in previous congresses. But there's good reason for this: Republicans have steadily done away with every other Senate rule that allows minorities to object to judicial nominees -- rules that Republicans took full advantage of when they were the ones out of power.
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Originally, after Republicans gained control of the Senate in the 1994 elections and Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch assumed control of the Judiciary Committee, the rule regarding judicial nominees was this: If a single senator from a nominee's home state objected to (or "blue-slipped") a nomination, it was dead. This rule made it easy for Republicans to obstruct Clinton's nominees.
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But in 2001, when a Republican became president, Hatch suddenly reversed course and decided that it should take objections from both home-state senators to block a nominee. That made it harder for Democrats to obstruct George W. Bush's nominees.
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When Democrats were in the majority, Republicans defended these traditional Senate rules and used them freely to block judges they had strong objections to. But when they became the majority party themselves, they gradually decided the rules should no longer be allowed to get in the way of unbridled majority power. It was only after Democrats were left with no other way to object to activist judges that they resorted to their last remaining option: the filibuster.
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Given this history, fair-minded Republicans would be better advised to restore some of the rules they themselves once defended so fervently than to attempt to tear down the last one remaining. After all, no majority lasts forever.
Read the full article here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50120-2005Jan30.html