Bloodless Coup

Bro,
You missed one. Hillary Clinton said this was the greatest attempt to consolidate power our nation has ever seen. Do you think she skipped class the day they talked about the Supreme Court packing plan? Oh, wait, that isn't a GOP lie, is it?

Morris,

Hillary Clinton is not correct in calling this the "greatest attempt to consolidate power our nation has ever seen." That would likely go to Lincoln's usurpation of legislative and (more importantly) judicial power during the Civil War.

However, Hillary's hyperbole doesn't negate the substance of her criticism. The Senate has always been envisioned as a body that resisted popular politics, and was a place where minority parties would have enough power to prevent full "rule by the people" by whomever was in power. I don't favor removing filibusters at any point. I won't change my position if the Dems get the White House and the Reps are filibustering. The filibuster is a perfectly legitimate check on the ability of the majority to run over the minority. That's fundamental to how this country works.

here here!!! it clearly is not constitutionally mandated, but it's consistent with the spirit both of the constitution and of the senate to, in effect, require that nominees for article III courts be passed by the 60 votes the filibuster, in its full deployment, necessitates. a tremendous number of judges, in the past and during the bush administration, easily draw more votes than that. it's only the nutbags -- on either side of the aisle -- or the extremists (all of whom are judicial activists by any number of demonstrable criteria) who draw fire. and with lifetime tenure in the offing, they should.

Joshua,
The trouble is that there's 90% extremists on both sides of the aisle, either extremists or people who fall in line behind them. The silly attempt they made at compromise was nothing more than an excuse to get their names on TV because letting a couple judges go by either means they shouldn't have been blocked to begin with or the compromisers betrayed their own conscience. There is great trouble in having the country as polarized as it is right now. The instant media understands that the greatest dramatic effect is to draw an audience by portraying not sublime wisdom but a great conflict that is simple enough for people to understand, so we can look forward to stalemate in government for years to come or some measure that alleviates this gridlock.
Baltar,
The idea that anyone in the Senate represents your ideal of something besides popular politics is rather incredulous when the Senate's leaders show up every Sunday morning on the TV shows, especially the ones bucking for a promotion in 2008. I agree that Lincoln's seizure of power was greater than FDR's threat, but perhaps only because the Supreme Court relented to the New Deal demands. If you had a choice between Bush seizing powers the way Lincoln did or appointing six more justices to decide what it Constitutional for the next several decades, I'm just not sure the choice would be as clear as you suggest. As for Hillary, she may speak in hyperbole, but that is only more evidence that drama has taken the place of thoughtfulness on the Senate floor. This is the extreme black and white view that is the problem, where Gitmo is the worst prison ever and Bush is the worst president ever, when the senators speaking have never been to Gitmo and apparently haven't learned anything about the past presidents.

i disagree that both sides of the aisle, equally or to any particularly appalling degree, are populated by "extremists." the near unanimous vote on iraq following a lack of substantive debate, the continuing complicity, in quiet but notable ways, of the democrats in the pro-corporate bias of the right, and the utter unwillingness on the left to call a spade a spade suggests that, if anything, the only extremism evident is the disconnect with the people, and that the center has been conspicuously and demonstrably shifted to the right.

that said, it can't be emphasized enough that the right consistently stakes out positions odious to significant majorities of the population on issues like abortion. over 60% of americans, poll after poll reveals, believe some elective abortions should remain legal. the republicans, the party of the vast majority of red-blooded (read christian and proud of it) americans as they would have it, haven't gotten that memo, as they continue to seek the absolute criminalization of the practice, something only their most extreme constituency seeks. still, though, that's not senatorial extremism -- it's merely the extreme cynicism of electoral triangulation: playing to the far right fringe has brought them to power, and they're going to keep singing the same tune until they're punished for it.

it's pavlovian. it's undemocratic.

all of that said -- and yes, i'm sure i'm just picking a pointless fight we've had ten times before -- if you read closely what i wrote, i was referring by using "extremists" to the judicial nominees, not the senators. by "both sides of the aisle" i intend to refer to nominees of the right and left, thus sharing baltar's magnanimity in arguing for the filibuster that it should be there in weather fair and foul, a consequence of my principled belief that demanding a supermajority of the senate to successfully appoint someone to a very important position for life.

i'd love to have a moderate judiciary; in no branch of government is moderacy more desirable. part of the reason we don't entirely have one, however, is that when the GOP was in the minority they heavily deployed the blue slip, the filibuster of one, to prevent Clinton from appointing anyone but the most vanilla of nominees to the appellate courts. meanwhile, with a few exceptions in heavy rotation, the abolishment of the blue slip and the tactically brilliant villification of the filibuster have enabled bush to stack the courts as reagan and his father began to do before him.

you don't believe me? name me three truly liberal circuits. you can't do it. because the ninth is the only one (and not by as much of a margin as people tend to think; the decisions of its frequent conservative panels get largely ignored in favor of the splashiest decisions of its liberal panels), with the first and second being moderate left at best, and the first being far more representative of the old-school judicial restraint touted by the right than any of the right's darling circuits (e.g., fourth, fifth), all of which are notably activist in flouting the supreme court's precedent when it suits them to do so.