Deal averts filibuster showdown in Senate

From the Houston Chronicle:

Averting a major showdown today that would have dramatically changed the way the Senate operates, a group of swing lawmakers Monday agreed to a compromise on filibusters to block judicial nominees.

The agreement will ensure that three judicial nominees blocked by Democrats, including Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen, will no longer be filibustered. A vote on Owen was expected today.

At the same time, the Democrats did not commit to end the filibustering of two other appellate court nominees and will retain the ability to block future judicial nominees, including a Supreme Court pick, but only under extraordinary circumstances.

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My initial reaction to this is that the Democrats lost: some "compromise," the Republicans get to have their up-or-down vote on the three extremist judges whose nominations forced this standoff in the first place. In other words, the GOP threatened to go "nuclear," and, as usual, the Democrats backed down. Bunch of pussies. Besides, if nominating extreme right-wing ideologues to the Federal bench doesn't constitute "extraordinary circumstances," what does?

This is the same old and tired bullshit. "Compromise" means giving the right wing what they want. This will never end. The Democrats are still trying to play it nice, trying to be civil, but what they don't understand is that the Conservative Movement will not rest until it has utterly destroyed liberalism as a relevant concept in American politics. Congressional Democrats are playing by the old rules while the Republicans have completely rewritten the entire game. We haven't "won" anything at all; I'm glad that this compromise has seemingly managed to keep the filibuster as a legislative tool, but that's simply maintaining the status quo: the left continues fight a rear guard action, as it has for over a decade now.

On the other hand, the Republicans seem to be much more broken up about this than their opponents. Right-wing evangelist James Dobson is apparently livid. Strangely, getting what they said they wanted is a loss to them. Of course, from my point of view that their real goal is to wipe out liberalism, what they really want is to pack the courts with as many right-wing crazies as they can find--the continued existence of the filibuster stands in the way of that. This kind of reminds me of football fans being pissed off that their team only won by thirty points instead of fifty. Go figure.

What I really want to know is the meaning of "extraordinary circumstances." This ain't over yet.

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