Two of the judges were picked not on the basis of anything terribly ideological but as retaliation for the elimination a few years back of the weird old "blue-slip" rule that made filibusters seem like High Tea. The comprimise the democrats initially offered was to allow votes on those two, which seemed a bit beside the point.
At least one of the other proposed appointees -- Brown -- is genuinely extreme (she holds the same sort of bizarre views of the constitution that I do, which I will be the first to say should exclude one from the civilized mainstream). I haven't looked much into the other seven.
As for "silencing debate" -- there's no debate. If the judges are blocked, there is no debate; if they are voted on, there is no debate. Senators cannot be forced to debate, and with party whip-discipline as strict as it is these days there are no votes to be changed by debate. The entire issue of "silencing debate" is a canard from both sides.
Finally, while I cannot speak for genuine liberals, we libertarians no longer have such archaic notions as "families", but rather encode and preserve customs, genomes, and capital through the use of more modern and efficient mechanisms such as alien brain-pods. We abandon such quaint ideas as "family" to the rubbish-bin of dusty conservative thought! Where are the "Focus on the Brain-Pods" groups, eh? Eh?
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Date: 2005-05-11 03:33 pm (UTC)Two of the judges were picked not on the basis of anything terribly ideological but as retaliation for the elimination a few years back of the weird old "blue-slip" rule that made filibusters seem like High Tea. The comprimise the democrats initially offered was to allow votes on those two, which seemed a bit beside the point.
At least one of the other proposed appointees -- Brown -- is genuinely extreme (she holds the same sort of bizarre views of the constitution that I do, which I will be the first to say should exclude one from the civilized mainstream). I haven't looked much into the other seven.
As for "silencing debate" -- there's no debate. If the judges are blocked, there is no debate; if they are voted on, there is no debate. Senators cannot be forced to debate, and with party whip-discipline as strict as it is these days there are no votes to be changed by debate. The entire issue of "silencing debate" is a canard from both sides.
Finally, while I cannot speak for genuine liberals, we libertarians no longer have such archaic notions as "families", but rather encode and preserve customs, genomes, and capital through the use of more modern and efficient mechanisms such as alien brain-pods. We abandon such quaint ideas as "family" to the rubbish-bin of dusty conservative thought! Where are the "Focus on the Brain-Pods" groups, eh? Eh?