More misleading MSM spin re renominated judicial candidates

I can't resist the urge to comprehensively fisk this badly misleading editorial from Newsday. My comments are bracketed and in green:

"The president looks like he is still more interested in picking fights than picking judges." That's Sen. Edward Kennedy's reaction to George W. Bush's decision to send seven nominations for the federal bench, previously derailed by Democratic filibusters, back to the Senate for another go. [This is just short of Sen. Minority Leader Harry Reid's brand of outright lying, but likewise promotes the false impressions that either the full Senate has previously voted on any of the resubmitted nominees, or that the full complement (or even a majority) of senate Dems has previously voted in favor of filibustering any of them.] Flip that pithy observation and you've got advice Bush should heed. [Sen. Kennedy and Newsday appear to believe that the Constitution imposes on the Senate an affirmative duty to "advise and block." These fights were quite literally picked — very selectively, based on which nominees their spin and disinformation could best be adapted to wound — and are being maintained by the very small handful of Democrats on the Judiciary Committee.]

Pick judges, Mr. President, not fights.  [Pithier advice for the Dems: Let every vote be taken!]

Bush has had great success in winning Senate confirmation for his judicial nominees: 204 confirmed, 10 blocked. He should declare victory and move on to new nominees rather than refighting old battles. But instead he has renominated seven of the rejected 10 for Senate consideration. [This was a major issue in the 2004 presidential campaign, in which Dubya was indeed victorious, and in a variety of Senate races that resulted in a larger Republican majority. Having won these elections, Newsday would now have Dubya and the Republican senators who campaigned on this issue break their promise to voters. By whose estimation would that be a victory? Perhaps instead the Senate Dems should recognize defeat, and move on to new battles.]

The White House says this fight is really about nominees for powerful federal appeals courts, where the numbers are less impressive: 51 nominees, 10 filibustered. [Actually, I am impressed by those numbers. They mean that eight percent of the Senate has, all by itself, blocked almost twenty percent of Dubya's circuit court nominees, and has kept one hundred percent of the Senate from holding an up-or-down vote. Impressive indeed! But hardly admirable or consistent with the Constitution.] Bush wants all of his nominees to have an up or down vote by the full Senate which, coincidentally, has a 55-member Republican majority. [Not a coincidence at all. See above re the 2004 election; see also U.S. Constitution, article 2, section 2, clause 2, providing for a simple majority advice and consent vote.]

But the handful of nominees blocked by Democrats were too far out of the judicial mainstream or too unforthcoming in committee hearings to warrant lifetime jobs as powerful federal appeals court judges. [Sez who? A minority of senators from the minority party. If fifty-one senators, of whatever party affiliations, agree that these nominees "were too far out of the judicial mainstream" or "too unforthcoming [sic] in committee hearings," then their nominations will be disapproved. But as things have been, a handful of senators have simultaneously strangled both the presidential nomination power and the Senate's advice and consent role. It's hard to imagine anything more elitist and less small-d democratic.] By shoving them back at Democrats, Bush has chosen confrontation over consultation or conciliation. [If we're going to get alliterative here — and by all means, let's! — I'd say Dubya has chosen constancy, candor, and constitutionalism over craven capitulation.]

His in-your-face move has set the stage for a disruptive, unnecessary fight over the filibuster, a time-honored Senate tactic that is one of the few weapons available to a party in the minority. It takes 60 out of 100 votes to end a filibuster and move on to an up or down confirmation vote. [This is highly misleading. No one is trying to end the historical practice of the filibuster outright. This is an attempt to restore the filibuster to its traditional and historic (albeit extraconstitutional role), in which it was used, sometimes nobly and oftentimes not, to temper blunt majority rule. Arguably that's a good thing for one chamber of a bicameral legislature to permit. But before 2001, the filibuster was never used to block Senate votes on judicial nominees to circuit or district court benches; with respect to those votes, this is not a "time honored tactic," but a radical power-grab by a minority of senators from the minority party.]

Senate Republicans could resort to the so-called nuclear option: Their majority could pass a rule expressly barring the use of a filibuster to block judicial nominees. If they do, Democrats have promised to respond in kind by using procedural tactics to grind Senate business to a messy halt. [We could call this the "nuclear option" and the "Jonestown counteroption." Ask Newt Gingrich how well the voting public responds to comprehensive legislative shutdowns. "Vote Dem in 2006! We can't win in a fair vote, but we know how to take our football and go home!"]

This is all just a warm-up for the main event: eventual fights over Bush Supreme Court nominees. [True.] But the nation is not well served by hyper-partisan warfare over the men and women who will serve as judges for life. [Also true. See comments above about who picked the fight, and who desperately wants to use hyperpartisan means to circumvent the last election returns and the Constitution's judicial confirmation process. See also the U.S. Constitution's provision cited above re the Senate serving the nation.] Reasonable people would reason together. Republicans and Democrats should, too. [And reasonable senators, Republican or Democrat, should do what the Constitution instructs and the voters expect them to do — after "reasoning together," then hold an open floor vote to reject or confirm this or any President's judicial nominees. That's called being a United States Senator first, and a partisan Republican or Democrat second.]

Fish, barrel, rat-ta-tat-tat.