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By Arianna Huffington
Right now, somewhere in the White House, administration
strategists are hatching plans to go to war. Battle plans are being
drawn. Timing and tactics are being finalized. A nuclear option is even
being openly discussed.
The designated target? Iran? Syria? North Korea?
No, much closer to home: the United States Senate.
Salivating at the chance to radically remake the Supreme
Court, the president and his loyal lapdogs in the World's Most
Exclusive Club are plotting to obliterate over 200 years of Senate
tradition by eliminating the use of filibusters against judicial
nominees.
The Robert's Rules of Disorder scheme would involve —
who else? — Vice President Dick Cheney, in his role as presiding Senate
officer, ruling that judicial filibusters are unconstitutional and
Majority Leader Bill Frist squashing the Democrats' inevitable
objection to such an edict by tabling the motion. As long as we're
"spreading democracy" abroad, no reason to leave out the home front,
right?
This is the so-called "nuclear option," embraced with a
wink and a nudge by Frist in November when he told the conservative
Federalist Society: "One way or another, the filibuster of judicial
nominees must end."
Invoking this parliamentary dirty trick would eliminate
unlimited debate on judicial nominations and lower the number of votes
needed before a nominee can be confirmed from the 60 necessary to break
a filibuster to a simple majority of 51, and would drive a stake
through the heart of the Senate's longstanding commitment — indeed one
of its founding purposes — to defending the rights of the minority.
This scorched-earth approach is entirely in keeping with
what Time magazine lauds this week as President Bush's "ten-gallon-hat
leadership" style — a my-way-or-the-highway approach rooted in
arrogance and laced with an intolerance of dissent that has already
delivered him a rubber stamp Cabinet. Now he wants a rubber stamp
Senate.
Over the course of his first term, 204 of Bush's
judicial nominees received Senate approval; just 10 were blocked. This
is the highest number of lower-court confirmations any president has
had in his first term since 1980 — including President Reagan. But,
apparently, the highest is not enough. This president wants total
approval of his every wish.
One small problem: That's not the way the Founding
Fathers designed things. They had these funny notions about three
separate but equal branches of government, free and open debate, and
the value of checks and balances to ward off the overreaching for power
by those in the majority. They built an entire system of government to
counteract the abuse that inevitably goes with overreaching.
Yet that is precisely what the plan to do away with
judicial filibusters is: an out-and-out power grab by the president and
his Congressional accomplices. An underhanded scheme to kneecap the
Constitution and take away the only weapon vanquished Democrats are
left with to defend against Bush's "ten-gallon-hat" juggernaut.
It would be impossible to overstate the importance of
this battle. It is nothing less than a fight for the soul of our
democracy — for what kind of country we want to live in.
"George W. Bush," Ralph Neas, President of People for
the American Way, told me, "has made it clear, both through his public
comments and through the judges he has nominated to appellate courts,
that he is committed to advancing an ideological agenda that would roll
back many of the social and legal gains of the last century."
According to Neas, who has been at the forefront of
judicial battles since the fight against Robert Bork in 1987, this is
not just about Roe vs. Wade — it's also about turning the clock back to
a time when states' rights and property rights trumped the protection
of individual liberties and the ability of Congress to act in the
common good on issues as far-ranging as civil rights enforcement,
environmental protection, and worker health and safety.
This is not overheated partisan rhetoric but a realistic
appraisal of the rulings handed down by the federal judges Bush has
already appointed — and of the written opinions of Antonin Scalia and
Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court Justices the president has cited as
his models for future nominees to the High Court. "Courting Disaster
2004," a study by People for the American Way Foundation, found that
adding just one or two Scalia/Thomas clones to the Supreme Court would
put at risk more than 100 precedents and the legal protections they
safeguard.
We're talking about the Voting Rights Act, affirmative
action, worker protections, access to contraceptives and legal
abortions, laws protecting our clean air and drinking water, and on and
on.
Senate rules regarding filibusters are not something
most Americans will find themselves discussing over a glass of eggnog
during the holidays. But the impact these rules can have on our lives
is staggering. And it must be made clear right now — not when Chief
Justice Rehnquist resigns and Cheney and Frist team up to push the
nuclear button. By then it will be much too late, and all Harry Reid
will be able to do is duck and cover. True leadership is being able to
see not just the crisis staring you in the face — but the one lurking
just around the corner.
President Bush is pulling on his oversized Stetson and
gearing up for battle. And here, unlike Iraq, he's making sure his
political troops have all the armor they need. The Democrats need to
pre-emptively launch an all-out campaign to educate the American people
about what will be at stake during the coming assault on our democratic
values.
If they succeed, they will have the public with them,
even if it becomes necessary to resort to threats of Mutually Assured
Legislative Destruction. Let's hope that's not what it will take to
protect the Senate, the Constitution, and over 65 years of hard-won
social victories from the GOP's looming nuclear winter.
© 2004 ARIANNA HUFFINGTON.
DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
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