Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Right-Wing Mind?

One of my favorite movies in 2004 was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in which the lead characters, after a bitter breakup, go to a fictional company called Lacuna to have all memories of the other person erased from their minds.

At least I thought it was a fictional company until I heard some of the arguments being made by conservatives against the Democratic filibusters of 10 (yes, only 10) extreme, ultra-right wing, Bush judicial nominees, and in support of using the "nuclear option" to change the Senate rules to eliminate the use of the filibuster for judicial nominees. It's as if these conservatives have had permanently erased from their memory years of historical acts committed by Republicans against Democratic judicial nominees.

For example, this evening on NPR I listened to C. Boyden Gray, former White House Counsel for Bush I and leader of some right-wing interest group aimed at confirming Bush's ultra-right-wing nominees (yes, those of you who are still obsessed with Senate Memogate, Republicans ALSO use interest groups in the judicial nomination process), wilfully distort simple facts and just plain lie about history.

Gray claimed that until last year, NO ONE, much less the Republicans had ever attempted to filibuster a President's judicial nominee, and, thus, it was entirely appropriate for the Republicans in the Senate to use the nuclear option.

Uh, C. Boyden, as the President would say, wanna buy some wood?

There is, of course, the famous historical example of Abe Fortas, Lyndon Johnson's nominee to succeed Earl Warren as Chief Justice in 1968, who was FILIBUSTERED by Senate Republicans, who sensed that they could take over the White House that fall and wanted the new President to appoint the next chief justice (which, of course, Nixon did). Fortunately, Ralph Neas, from the People for the American Way, was also on the program and quickly corrected Gray's wilful misstatement, describing it aptly as "feeling like the man following the elephants around in the circus." Gray then had an extremely feeble explanation that the Fortas filibuster, well, wasn't really a filibuster because it was only the Senate floor for FOUR DAYS and then the nomination was withdrawn. (Gray also mumbled something about how it wasn't a filibuster because Fortas didn't have majority support and couldn't have been confirmed anyway, which Neas promptly showed was wrong, in fact Fortas would have gotten 50 or 51 votes.)

But, let's pretend the Lacuna machine has succeeded in erasing that memory in Gray's mind, because after all it was nearly 40 years ago. Is there anything more recent?

Why, yes. How about the, gasp!, filibuster by Senate Republicans in 2000 of President Clinton's judicial nominations of Richard Paez and Marsha Berzon to the Ninth Circuit?

And guess who was one the Senators who participated in the filibuster of Paez and Berzon? Why none other than Majority Leader Bill Frist, who is one of the ring-leaders now in objecting to the Senate Democrat's use of the filibuster.

Frist was questioned about this fact on Face the Nation in November, and had this stumbling reply:

Frist was directly confronted with this vote by Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation (11/21/04). Schieffer said "Senator, a group called The American Progress Action Fund sent me a question to ask you. And here's what it says: 'Senator Frist, if you oppose the use of the filibuster for judicial nominations, why did you vote to filibuster Judge Richard Paez when President Clinton nominated him to the 9th Circuit?'" Frist replied "Filibuster, cloture, it gets confusing--as a scheduling or to get more information is legitimate. But no to kill nominees."

Funny, here's a press release issued by Senator Bob Smith of New Hampshire on March 9, 2000, describing what he and his Senate colleagues had done to Paez and Berzon. Smith described that he had:

led a filibuster yesterday on the nomination of Richard A. Paez
and Marsha Berzon to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and today managed
the Senate floor debate on the nominations... Smith, along with Senator Jeff
Sessions (R-AL), built a coalition of several moderate and conservative Senators
in an effort to block these nominations. Smith and Sessions' s motion to
indefinitely delay the confirmation of Paez failed to pass the Senate
31-67.

Wait, wait, wait. But didn't Frist say above that the filibuster was OK to use "as a scheduling or to get more information" about a nominee? How do we know that the filibuster against Paez and Berzon, which Frist voted for, wasn't about those things, and not because they were allegedly extremists, which is why the Democrats are blocking Bush's nominees? Uh, back to the Smith press release:

"Paez and Berzon are activist judges. I think they are out of the mainstream of
American thought and I don't think either one should be on the court," Smith
said today on the Senate floor.

But limiting the discussion to filibusters is just too convenient for Republicans. How do you think we've gotten many of these vacancies that, according to C. Boyden, desperately "need to filled"?

Well, it's because Senate Republicans blocked nearly 1/3 of President Clinton's judicial nominees from 1995-2000 from ever coming up for a vote, either in the full Senate or in the Judiciary Committee. Indeed, most of these Clinton nominees never ever got a Committee hearing. So, there's no reason to filibuster something when you can simply prevent it from ever coming to the Senate floor in the first place.

One way this was done was through a strict application of "blue slip" policy:

In the past, Hatch has been a fervent supporter of the Senate’s “blue slip”
policy, which has allowed home-state senators who object to a judicial nominee
to delay action in the Judiciary Committee by not returning a nominee’s “blue
slip” to the committee. As American Prospect has noted, “it was Hatch, in 1995,
who hardened the blue-slip policy to allow a single senator to block a
nomination indefinitely.” Indeed, Sen. Hatch made his blue slip policy explicit
in 1998 by stating on the blue slips themselves that “[n]o further proceedings
on this nominee will be scheduled until both blue slips have been returned by
the nominee’s home state senators.” Now, [after Bush was elected in 2000],
however, Hatch has apparently declared a new policy saying that even though a
senator’s decision not to return a blue slip would be given great weight, it
would not be allowed to prevent Hatch from moving nominees he wants to move. “In other words,” says Hatch, “we can go ahead with certain nominees where you might
have a withheld blue slip.” Sen. Barbara Boxer in particular has objected to
proceeding on controversial nominee Carolyn Kuhl, regarding whom Boxer has not
returned her blue slip [yet Hatch proceeded on the nomination anyway.]

The fact of the matter is that the very same people who now say that the President deserves the right to appoint conservatives to the bench without obstruction were silent when the same thing OR WORSE was happening to Clinton's nominees.

But let's discuss the filibuster itself. Republicans have used the filibuster freely, even to successfully filibuster President Clinton's nominee for Surgeon General in 1995. But let's also remember what Republicans have said about the filibuster recently:

In defending a filibuster on a judicial nomination in 1994, Hatch himself
explained that the filibuster is “one of the few tools the minority has to
protect itself and those the minority represents.”

Hmm. My favorite, however, is the statement made on the Senate floor by Senator Isakson (R-GA) on February 15, 2005, talking about a meeting with leader in Iraq:

"And even though the results of the election were not complete at the time we
werethere, we knew they would be in a minority, and we asked, 'Don't you
fear that the Shi'ites inevitably being in the majority, that you'll be
overturned?' He says, 'Oh, no, we have a secret weapon.' Mr. President, this
is a Kurdish leader, of course, in the middle of Iraq, in the 21st century,
who said he had a secret weapon. And we asked what the secret weapon was,
and he said, 'Filibuster.'"

And why, pray tell, did this Kurdish leader tell Isakson the Iraqis needed a filibuster?

"To ensure that the majoirty party never overran the minority."

So, while the Republicans try to play games with facts and simply say things that aren't true, it's possible that they've had these prior actions by Republicans erased from their memories by Lacuna.

Or maybe they're just lying weasels.
- posted by Joshua @ 11:09 PM (0) comments