Looks like we got a deal folks.  Owen will advance to a vote.  We won't filibuster except in "extraordinary circumstances."  You can drive a truck through that one, I can assure you.  In fact, if we want to highlight one of these wingnut's records, all we need to say is that it is extraordinary.  The loser in all of this?  Frist of course.  Look for Dobson and co. to bail on him any day now.

However, Weinberg described the current system being deployed in Alaska and elsewhere by the Bush administration to defend against a limited ICBM attack as "a system which has no capability at all."

Note, that's Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist Steven Weinberg.

Rick Santorum, March 3, 2005:

Senator Byrd's inappropriate remarks comparing his Republican colleagues with Nazis are inexcusable," Santorum said in a statement yesterday. "These comments lessen the credibility of the senator and the decorum of the Senate. He should retract his statement and ask for pardon.

Rick Santorum, May 19, 2005:

The audacity of some members to stand up and say, how dare you break this rule. It's the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 "I'm in Paris. How dare you invade me. How dare you bomb my city? It's mine."

Audacity indeed. 

I've been intrigued by talk of some sort of Centrist compromise to take the Nuclear Option off the table but when I read the details given by this article I wonder what kinda moderate Democrat would go for this:

Senate centrists hope to avoid both options. If they can get 12 senators — six Republicans and six Democrats — to agree on a deal they can prevent Frist from banning judicial filibusters and keep Reid from filibustering Bush appointees.

Under the most recent Republican-crafted offer, Democrats would have to allow the confirmation of six Bush nominees: Owen, Brown, and former Alabama Attorney General William Pryor, as well as Michigan nominees Susan Neilson, David McKeague and Richard Griffin. The Senate would scuttle the nominations of Idaho lawyer William Myers and Michigan nominee Henry Saad, aides said.

But more importantly, both sides would have to operate on "good faith" when it comes to future nominations. The aides spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions are being held behind closed doors.

So basically the Republicans get the nominees they want, with the help of a handful of Democrats and we're suppose to believe that Republicans will then act in "good faith" during future nominations when their actions during this fiasco and the previous fifteen years suggest absolutely no capacity for acting in good faith.

Why would any self-respecting Democrat, whether liberal, moderate or conservative, go for a solution that only encourages future Republican efforts to steamroll them over judicial nominees yet alone agree to a so-called compromise that futhers the bogus spin that Democratic objections to these nominees are without merit and merely partisan obstruction?

Update:  Looks like Matt Yglesias over at Tapped agrees that compromises like the one above are boneheaded and ass-backwards.

From Michael Terry of Kansas, we learn that Jesse Jackson is a racist.

I guess Michael has a point, because it appears from the post that Jesse has personally been calling him and his entire family and race a racist for years:

As a Caucasian man I have grown tired and weary of your use of the word “racist” in relation to me, my family, my ancestors, and my nation. It has not only become trite, but now I find it extremely offensive.

Apparently, Mr. Terry thinks Jesse should answer to him:

Will you, or can you answer the above questions? I think not. You’ll merely cry and whine about how negroes are victims of some invisible evil white cabal who have nothing better to do with their allotted time on this earth than make the lives of negroes as miserable as they possibly can. I do wish you would name the members of this mysterious cabal and get it over with and stop yelping like a dog that got whacked on the nose with a newspaper for crapping on the carpet.

You see, according to Mr. Terry, the problem is that non-whites have no real heroes.

Why is it that negroes, like Hispanics, don’t have too many heroes to emulate like whites do? Mexicans always bring up Poncho Villa and negroes Booker T. Washington. Caucasians have so many people of their own race to emulate it’s hard to pick one. I won’t list them here because I don’t have the time or space.

You see, Jesse just doesn't have the right attitude:

Instead of condemning Caucasians you should be thanking them. You could be in Africa chasing elephants or monkeys with a blow-gun or spear to get your dinner for the day.

Mr. Terry is right about one thing.  Racism never does go out of style, does it?

If you're like me and have been dumbfounded by the mainstream media's total inability to provide even the hint of an explanation as to how the Republicans intend to break Senate rules to do away with the filibuster for judicial nominees yet alone have anybody explain why it is wrong, I refer you to this op-ed by a Vanderbilt University Law Professor.

And if you're still confuse check out Norm Ornstein here and here.

Bill Frist, on the floor of the Senate, on his filibuster of Clinton Appeals Court nominee Richard Paez:

SEN. SCHUMER: Isn’t it correct that on March 8, 2000, my colleague [Sen. Frist] voted to uphold the filibuster of Judge Richard Paez?

SEN. FRIST: The president, the um, in response, uh, the Paez nomination - we’ll come back and discuss this further. … Actually I’d like to, and it really brings to what I believe - a point - and it really brings to, oddly, a point, what is the issue. The issue is we have leadership-led partisan filibusters that have, um, obstructed, not one nominee, but two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, in a routine way.

The issue is not cloture votes per se, it’s the partisan, leadership-led use of cloture votes to kill - to defeat - to assassinate these nominees. That’s the difference. Cloture has been used in the past on this floor to postpone, to get more info, to ask further questions.

Really, Bill?  To paraphrase a great blogger, Sadly, no!  Paez had been pending for four years when Frist voted against clouture.  Here's a record of the vote. The sponsor of the filibuster, Sen. Smith of New Hampshire made it clear why they were voting to block the nomination:  to block it:

Senator Bob Smith (R-N.H.) today led the fight on the Senate floor to block the nominations of two activist Clinton judicial nominees.

I watched this fool debate Byrd and Reid on the same issue last week.  The argument was all hot air and nothing else.  At core, the man knows what he is doing is morally wrong.

 

Watching this video of John Bolton in action, it makes you wonder what he hopes to accomplish as Ambassador to the UN.

Powerline on Abramoff:

In a spirit of honesty, however, I admit that I'd like to see Abramoff left alone in large part because, instead of spending the millions of dollars he raked in on Ferraris and yachts, he lavishly spent it on causes that I think are good and important.

. . . Yes, I have a conflict of interest — and such conflicts, arising from one's political or moral value system, can be more powerful than conflicts that arise from the scent of money. I wish Abramoff's tormentors would be similarly honest. Let them admit their own wish to see the political consequences of the Abramoff affair that they, simulating disinterest, now predict.

Corruption in Congress needs to be punished, whomever does it.  I guess the argument is that if Democrats oppose naked corruption, they should be stopped from ending it because Mammon is serving God now.  And the Republicans wonder how they got here.

As for me wishing poltical consequences--you bet.  Because the party in power is a party of power walking wrapped in the stolen robes of saints.  As corrupt as some Democrats have been, they knew what they were.  That doesn't justify what they did, it just makes the sins of the current rulers so much worse.

We'll be seeing more of this bitter invective as the Republican machine heads for its inevitable crash.  What we won't see is an admission of truth:  that these Republicans never let a moral belief get in the way of the means.

Finally, an Iraqi party gets it:

The meeting noted that the stalemate in forming the government has significant meanings, as it continues under two contradictions: with the occupation forces, on one hand, and with the anti-people and anti-democratic forces, on the other hand. Two years after the fall of Saddam's regime, our country is still in a state of seeking an alternative.  It is an alternative that our party, along with all the forces that truly aspire to liberation and a free dignified life, strive to be the national democratic alternative: a democratic, federal, pluralistic alternative, and state institutions  based on justice and the rule of law".

"The struggle is currently taking place between competing forces and groups, against a background of the negative dimension of elections, manifested in sectarian-nationalist polarization and lack of political and election awareness. This struggle is about visions for Iraq's political future. This is taking place under an unstable balance of forces caused by the lack of participation of broad sections of the population in elections due to the deteriorating security situation in some areas and the refusal by some forces to take part. This indicates a potential re-alignment of forces in the forthcoming phase of the political process".

"Increasing numbers of the electorate now realize, amid feelings of frustration and bitterness, that the bickering between the winners is over the distribution of positions and cabinet posts, in accordance with the infamous rule of dividing up these positions along sectarian-nationalist lines. This rule should have been brought to an end by the elections, rather than being reinforced, in a stark sign of utter disregard for the people's interests, their needs and aspirations.

Too bad they are the Iraqi Communist Party.  Man, when the Communists have a clearer view of what's going on than the U.S. of A., you know we are screwed.

President Clinton let big donors sleep in the White House.

Correction:  President George W. Bush let big donors sleep in the White House and Camp David.  The Iron Mouth regrets the error.

Lutheran Executive Officer in charge of the chaplain squadron at the Air Force Academy complains about the oppressive religious atmosphere at the Academy and the failure of a program to teach tolerance of other religions.  The result?  She's fired.

Chan Chandler, pastor of East Waynesville Baptist Church, who forced out 40 Democrats from his congregation, has resigned. 

While reading this article yesterday about how White House officials repeatedly pushed for elevated threat level warnings using only the flimsiest of evidence, it occurred to me that we really haven't had such warnings since Mr. Bush was reelected.  Seems to me this was almost a monthly occurrence throughout 2004, so my question of the day for our loyal IRONMOUTH readers is this:

Why haven't there been the same level of terrorist alerts this year as we saw last?

a.  Tom Ridge no longer heading the Department of Homeland Security.

b.  Terror alerts an integral part of the President's re-election campaign and no longer needed.

c.  Terrorists no longer hate our freedoms and seek to destroy them.

We encourage you to come up with your own explanation, if you can.....