Important information from the American Family Association

A buddy of mine just forwarded an alert from the American Family Association.

According to the AFA:

We have come down to the final days and hours in the fight for our destiny. Now is your last chance to have input into the filibuster fight.

Call your two Senators today and ask them to vote to kill the filibuster. If they do not, only those nominees who would become a liberal activist judge will ever get a vote on the Senate floor.

Got it? If Frist and the Republican members of the Senate do not break Senate rules in order to eliminate the use of the filibuster, then only liberal activist judges will ever get a vote on the Senate floor. Apparently, the AFA is telling us that the 95% of George W. Bush’s judicial nominees who have been confirmed are, in fact, liberal activist judges. Who knew?

Kos has a short analysis of the GOP “nuclear option” described by the above linked Washington Post article. But basically, it goes like this:

Democrats have used the filibuster to block a handful of Bush’s judicial nominees. The filibuster is permitted by Senate Rules. It takes 60 votes to break a filibuster. The Republicans don’t have 60 votes, they only have 55 votes.

Getting rid of the filibuster requires a change in the Senate Rules which requires a 2/3 vote. Republicans don’t have 67 votes, they have only 55 votes.

Republicans will argue that they are not changing the Senate Rules, they are merely “interpreting them” to say that the filibuster is not permissible for use to delay a vote on judicial nominees. (Nevermind the Republican filibuster of Abe Fortas, LBJ’s nominee to become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court).

Setting a precedent requires only 51 votes. However, to proceed in this fashion, they have to ignore the nonpartisan analysis of the Senate Rules of the Congressional Research Service and ignore the interpretation of their own parliamentarian both of which state the obvious — prohibiting the filibuster with regard to debate on judicial nominees would be a change in the Senate Rules.

Drunk with power these guys are. How do the Greek tragedies go? Something like hubris, nemesis, catharsis. We’ve got the hubris in spades. I just hope the American Republic doesn’t get hammered too badly in the nemesis part of the equation on the way to catharsis.