Such claims, however, are at odds with the record of the successful 1968
GOP-led filibuster against President Lyndon B. Johnson's nomination of Abe
Fortas to be chief justice of the United States. "Fortas Debate Opens with a
Filibuster," a Page One Washington Post story declared on Sept. 26, 1968. It
said, "A full-dress Republican-led filibuster broke out in the Senate yesterday
against a motion to call up the nomination of Justice Abe Fortas for Chief
Justice."

A New York Times story that day said Fortas's opponents "began a
historic filibuster today." As the debate dragged on for four days, news
accounts consistently described it as a full-blown filibuster intended to
prevent Fortas's confirmation from reaching the floor, where a simple-majority
vote would have decided the question. The required number of votes to halt a
filibuster then was 67; filibusters can be halted now by 60 of the Senate's 100
members...

Some current Republican leaders -- citing comments by then-Sen. Robert P.
Griffin (R-Mich.), who led the Fortas opposition -- say the 1968 debate was not
a true filibuster. But there is little in the record to support that assertion.
The Washington Post reported on Oct. 2, 1968: "In a precedent-shattering rebuff
to the Administration, the Senate yesterday refused to cut off the filibuster
against consideration of Abe Fortas to be Chief Justice." The Congressional
Quarterly Almanac reported in 1968: "The effort to block the confirmation by
means of a filibuster was without precedent in the history of the Senate." The
Senate Web site's account of the episode is headlined "Filibuster Derails
Supreme Court Appointment."

But such assertions are unproven at best, and certainly subject to
challenge based on the record. It is impossible to gauge the exact support for
Fortas because 12 senators were absent for the "cloture" or "closure" vote,
which failed to halt the filibuster. The 45 to 43 vote in favor of ending debate
fell far short of the needed two-thirds majority.

Some Fortas backers, including Johnson, said the vote suggested that a slim
majority favored him. The disappointed president "feels there is a majority in
the Senate in favor of the nomination," his spokesman said shortly after the
defeat.

Anecdotal evidence suggests, but does not prove, that a majority of
senators may have backed Fortas or been undecided when the debate began. An
Associated Press head count found that 35 of the 100 senators "are now committed
against voting for closure," the New York Times reported. That suggested that as
many as 65 senators conceivably were open to voting on the nomination.

Then-Sen. Howard H. Baker Jr. (R-Tenn.), a Fortas opponent, also hinted
that his side felt it lacked a majority. Defending the newly launched
filibuster, Baker said: "On any issue the majority at any given moment is not
always right."...

The strongest evidence that anti-Fortas senators were not confident of
commanding a majority is the fact that they fought so tenaciously to keep the
confirmation from reaching a vote, says Norman J. Ornstein, a congressional
scholar who has written extensively on the Fortas matter. Ornstein, of the
American Enterprise Institute, said: "This was a filibuster. It was intended to
keep the nomination from moving forward for the remainder of that term."
Frist and others who now threaten to ban filibusters of judicial nominees,
Ornstein said, "are trying to provoke a change that isn't defensible through
history."

Frist sometimes speaks of the current judicial impasse in terms that take the
Fortas case's complexities into account. "Never before in the history of the
Senate has a nominee with clear majority support been denied an up or
down vote on the Senate floor because of a filibuster," Frist said
Tuesday.

While we hoped that popular revolt or coup would topple Saddam, neither the U.S.
nor the countries of the region wished to see the breakup of the Iraqi state. We
were concerned about the long-term balance of power at the head of the Gulf.
Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq,
would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream,
engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and
political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to
find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to
occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have
collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well.
Under those circumstances, furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to
set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-cold war world. Going in and
occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate, would have
destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to
establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be
an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically
different--and perhaps barren--outcome.

I think it's a nutty idea to fool around with the Social Security system and run
the risk of [hurting] the people who've been saving all their lives.... It may
be a new idea, but it's a dumb one.

Panic on the plane! Fire in the hole! We know Gov. George W. Bush was
arrested for drinking and driving at the age of 30. But did he also lie about it
to the press?

It was Friday morning, and Wayne Slater of the Dallas Morning News was
sitting on the Bush campaign plane as we flew from Milwaukee to Grand Rapids,
Mich. Slater was telling his fellow journalists about his conversation with Bush
in the fall of 1998, when he asked Bush if he had ever been arrested since 1968
and Bush said, "No."

Suddenly Bush communications director Karen Hughes appeared. (Cue Darth
Vader theme song.)

Her jaw was clenched. Her eyes were shooting piercing glares into Slater's
amiable mug. "That conversation was off the record, wasn't it, Wayne?" she
said.

Slater said it wasn't. The mood grew even tenser. The crowd increased in
size.

So Hughes tried again, explaining why she had cut off the 1998
conversation, which had left Slater with the impression that Bush was on the
brink of correcting his lie before Hughes abruptly ended the conversation.

Bush "was hinting that something had happened, that's why I stepped in and
stopped the conversation," she said.

More questions. Why didn't the governor tell Slater that he had been
arrested after 1968?

"The governor at the time, remember the governor has twin daughters at
a very impressionable age, he had made a decision as a father that he has been
very forthcoming in acknowledging that he made mistakes," Hughes said. "In
acknowledging that he drank too much in the past before he quit drinking 14
years ago. But he had made a decision as a father that he did not want to set
that bad example for his daughters or for any other children."

Would the daughter excuse have been OK for President Clinton to use during
the Monica Lewinsky scandal? Would it have been OK if Clinton had said that he
lied under oath so as not to set a bad example for Chelsea?

"The only time the governor was directly asked ... if he'd ever been
arrested for drinking, and he replied, 'I do not have a perfect record,'" Hughes
said, completely avoiding the question. "Throughout this campaign he has been
very forthcoming with the American people that he made mistakes as a youth, that
he did things as a youth that he is not proud of, and he has been very open
about that."

Is a 30-year-old a youth?

No answer. Later she would say, "It was before he was married, It was
before he had children."