Should we let Bill Frist & Co. change the rules of the senate ?

A.P. writes:..."This whole debate, for me, is about the Supreme Court," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., one of the Senate negotiators who scurried from office to office Wednesday trying to work out a deal that would avoid a showdown over whether to block the use of filibusters against judicial nominees. "What do you do with the next level? Can you get the Senate back to more of a normal working situation?"..."When a Supreme Court position becomes open the issue will be, will it require 60 votes to approve a Supreme Court judge - something that's never required - or will it be a majority vote? Must we have a super majority?" said Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan.

holmes writes:It also cannot act as you suggest, with the minority holding sway until reaching the majority. If that were the case then what's the difference, because then the new minority can hold things off till they return to power?

EZscience writes:A little 'negative power' hardly equals control, and it becomes completely irrelevant if power subsequently changes hands.

aclj.org writes:Democratic leaders in the Senate, including the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, have announced their intent to stonewall confirmation of Bush's judicial nominees if those nominees do not adhere to left-wing pro-abortion ideology.

aclj.org writes:Many of the ills that plague our society have resulted from judicial rulings that reflect the personal political agenda of liberal judges, instead of honest, careful interpretations of the Constitution. There are currently over 90 vacancies in the federal judiciary. In some circuits, such as the Sixth Circuit, the situation is especially critical.

holmes writes:But I stand confused on what you just said. Do you really believe that this nation's courts are best served by having ideologically driven justices that represent the moral outlook of the ruling party?

FOCUS writes:The debate is almost over in the battle to restore Senate tradition by ending the Democrats' unprecedented filibusters of President Bush's judicial nominees. In what could be a matter of hours, senators may be asked to vote on the "constitutional option" -- a plan to return to 51, the number of votes needed to confirm a nominee to the federal bench.Those behind the filibusters have tried every trick in the book to paint the constitutional option as a Republican "power grab," but Focus on the Family Action Chairman Dr. James Dobson says it's all smoke and mirrors -- just the latest example of the kind of name-calling (as reported by Dr. Dobson in CitizenLink) that liberals have resorted to because they have no rational arguments to offer."Liberals (are) ratcheting up their rhetoric, accusing the GOP -- and me, personally -- of committing grave crimes against democracy," Dr. Dobson explains. "Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar has called me the 'antichrist of the world' for pointing out how he broke his campaign promise by supporting his party's filibusters. On the Senate floor last week Vermont's Patrick Leahy -- after wondering what planet I might be from -- accused me of 'contemptible' actions and of practicing 'religious McCarthyism' for pointing out the anti-religious bias evident in the public statements and actions of some Democratic senators.""This kind of bluster is what is contemptible. It is just another attempt to obscure the real issue here -- that every judicial nominee with clear majority support is entitled to an up-or-down vote," Dr. Dobson adds. "Sen. Salazar, Sen. Leahy and their colleagues won't admit that, because it would jeopardize their efforts to hang on to the last bastion of liberal power, the courts. But their smokescreens must be seen through, and the constitutional option must be approved at the conclusion of this debate."You can do your part to make that happen by calling your two U.S. senators right now -- at their Washington and local district offices -- and telling them respectfully that you want them to end the obstruction and support the constitutional option. For a list of office phone numbers for both of your senators, visit the CitizenLink Action Center and type your ZIP code into the space provided.(Incidentally, you might be interested to know that -- despite the charges of the left -- it's hardly radical to oppose the use of filibusters to prevent up-or-down votes for judicial nominees. Back in 1968, in fact, some of the leading legal minds in the country said as much in a letter to the Senate.)Thank you for taking the time to stand for righteousness.

googlenews writes:Mark Peplowski, a political science instructor at the Community College of Southern Nevada, said the deal preserved the filibuster, which was most important to the Democrats.Peplowski invoked a chess analogy. "All those circuit court judges were pawns, and the real play will be on Supreme Court nominations," he said. "Taking away the filibuster would have stripped the Democrats of their queen."

I do believe corporations try and use their connections to try and secure an eternal flow of unending wealth at the expense of the American taxpayers. That is in their interest, so of course they would. Don't you think they do?

frog writes:I'm no lawyer. But I do believe that a captive audience has the right not to have to sit through, and by extension, participate in, even the briefest religious ritual.

Wingspan: Journal Of The Male Spirit, "The Green Man Reawakens," October-December, 1991, p. 1."As men in quest of masculine soul, many of us are attempting to heal our lives and reconnect with our authentic, deep masculinity...the trend to personify soul and the earth as feminine, effectively perpetuates the divorce of the male psyche from its own fecund (meaning fertile), inner-masculine, life-affirming nature....For images of this masculine ideal, some of us are turning toward the ancient gods of the Earth...One of these images is the Green Man... a masculine personification of Nature -- the Earth Father."As we stop to examine this incredible information, we can empathize with the deep spiritual cry flowing from the pen of the writer. He is genuinely searching for the truth, albeit in the wrong place. That this author has rejected the One True God can be seen in another part of the article, where he states that women have traditionally been wronged by the belief in monotheism "through exiling and degrading the sacred image of the Goddess." Once men thus reject the Truth about God which God has revealed through Scripture and through Nature, Satan can mislead them into a false religion that will produce a false religious experience.Another observation is that the worship of the "ancient masculine gods of the Earth" is simply a return to the old Paganism of the Romans, Greeks, Babylonians, and American Indians. The writer of Ecclesiastes was certainly correct when he stated, many years ago, that "there is nothing new under the sun".

aclj.org writes:If your school system already integrates liberal sex educators such as Planned Parenthood or homosexual advocates such as California's Project 10, you probably have grounds to object. Such programs usually cross over from objective teaching to advocating amorality. Appeal to your school board that the course undermines parental authority by implying to students that everyone their age is having sex, or by teaching that homosexuality is normal, or by telling students that they can easily and confidentially arrange abortions without their parents' knowledge. A religion can be any set of beliefs by which a person lives and trains their children to live, even amorality. If necessary, object on First Amendment grounds. Show that the state is illegally establishing a religion by advocating amorality.

holmes writes:I do hope you are joking. I kind of assume you are.

frog writes:So they're not a captive audience, now are they? School curricula are generally avaliable for inspection in advance. Was the graduation ceremony, and the woman's song performance, avaliable for the same prior inspection?

Schraff writes:Give me one specific example of any liberal politican or judge or lobbyist has tried to enact into law a policy in which all Americans will be forced to "deify themselves" and/or "worship nature", or stop making such preposterous, false statements.

holmes writes:Your right not to hear the word "faith" (I don't think there was even the word God in the song) warbled by a graduating teen, because you don't like the suggestion that she might be religious, is seriously less important than her ability to express what she is feeling about life. She was offered a small moment in the sun by some students that wanted to hear what she had to say. Let her express herself.

Schraff writes: Maybe America is too pluralistic and tolerant of difference for you.

frogocrat writes:A student who becomes a state actor is an agent of the state...