Missouri Democrats Engage in Inspiring Filibuster of Anti-Gay "Religious Freedom" Law

At times it seems as if self-prostituting Republicans are in a contest across the country to see who can most debase themselves to Christian extremists and undermine non-discrimination protections for LGBT citizens.  Here in Virginia we have seen the Republicans in the House of Delegates introduce a plethora of anti-gay bills, most of which have thankfully been tabled and/or face a veto by Democrat Governor Terry McAuliffe.  In Missouri, similar efforts are embodied by a GOP effort to write discrimination into the state constitution and grant special rights to Christian extremists.  Thankfully,  the Democrat minority in the state Senate have launched a filibuster (it's gone for over 26 hours so far) to block a vote on the foul effort.  The Democrat effort has prompted many Twitter posts that can be viewed here.  Here are highlights from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on other aspects of the filibuster effort:

Missouri is grabbing national headlines as word of Senate Democrats' day-long filibuster spreads.

A proposal by Sen. Bob Onder, R-Lake Saint Louis [Senate Joint Resolution 39], is designed to protect wedding vendors and clergy from legal liability and government penalties if they decline to participate in same-sex marriage ceremonies.

Proponents say churches in other states have had their tax-exempt statuses threatened. They've also used an example from Oregon, where a baker was ordered to pay damages for declining to bake for a same-sex wedding, as a reason for why the amendment is needed.

But Democrats charge that clergy are already protected under the First Amendment, and that the proposal does little more than codify discrimination against gays in the state constitution.

So shortly after 4 p.m. Monday, the Democratic minority launched a filibuster to stall the bill. As of 4 p.m. Tuesday, the bill had yet to come to a vote. Meanwhile, the debate has drawn nationwide attention from news outlets and social media.

Companies and at least one business group have also voiced opposition. Last week, PROMO, an LGBT advocacy group, published a letter with 185 Missouri businesses, churches and other groups voicing opposition.

Dow Chemical and the St. Louis Regional Chamber of Commerce have also recently voiced opposition.

Creve Coeur-based Monsanto also came out against the measure Tuesday.  "Monsanto has a long history of employing a diverse workforce and creating an inclusive environment for our employees," its statement reads, in part. "Monsanto is calling on other businesses and the agricultural community to join the company in speaking out against discrimination here in our home state of Missouri and around the world."

Once again, I ask myself "why would any LBGT individual support GOP candidates?"  

 

The Supreme Court’s Coming Paralysis

With the U.S. Supreme Court evenly divided except for Justice Kennedy's swing vote - which often comes across as that of someone suffering bi-polar disorder since each of his progressive rulings is offset by a frighteningly backward one - many fear what will happen if one of the "liberal" justices dies or is forced to retire.  Why the fear?  Because the Republicans in the U.S. Senate could balk and refuse to confirm an Obama appointee thereby leaving the Court paralyzed.  Sadly, such paralysis would be consistent with the GOP's push to shut down government through any means possible.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the possible nightmare scenario.  Here are some highlights:

It’s a question that’s roiled the liberal universe for years: Why won’t 81-year-old Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg resign from the Supreme Court and give President Obama the chance to pick her successor, in case the Senate turns Republican after the mid-terms?

Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, one of the left’s jurisprudential heroes, had a ready answer to that question when it was posed to him at the University of California Santa Barbara late last month. There is, he said, not a chance in hell that this Senate would confirm her successor, no matter who he or she might be—not the way the process works today. And therein lies a tale about just how drastically the “advise and consent” process has changed, and why the smart bet would be on a paralyzed process, and perhaps even a Court with fewer than nine Justices, no matter what happens in November.

Once upon a time, the Senate took that “advise and consent” phrase of the Constitution literally: They sometimes advised, but almost always consented, to a President’s choice. From 1894 to 1967, only one Supreme Court nominee was rejected.
But it wasn’t until 1968 that a President found his Supreme Court pick blocked. When Lyndon Johnson sought to elevate Justice Abe Fortas to the Chief Justice post to replace Earl Warren, a coalition of Southern Democrats and Republicans, angered by his liberal votes on civil liberties, his continued political counseling of LBJ, and some dicey financial dealings, successfully filibustered the nomination.

At that point, the process took a sharply different turn—to outright rejection of a nominee. President Nixon’s choice of Judge Clement Haynesworth to replace Abe Fortas was soundly defeated, 55-45, by senators who believed—not entirely accurately—that Haynesworth had demonstrated anti-labor and pro-segregationist tenancies in his rulings, and that he had had a financial interest in one of the cases he helped decide.

Nixon’s second nominee, Federal District Judge Harrold Carswell, may well have been the single least qualified nominee ever . . .

In these two cases, something other than ideology was, at least ostensibly, at stake—qualifications or some kind of impropriety. 

Not so in the case of Judge Robert Bork, whose background as a Yale law professor and federal judge made him clearly qualified on intellectual grounds. The case against Bork was, in the broadest sense of the word, “political”—that his views on privacy, civil rights, and other issues put him “outside the mainstream.”

This might suggest that the future of any prospective Obama nomination will turn on who winds up controlling the Senate; except, of course, it doesn’t. When Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid invoked the “nuclear option” last November, which ruled the filibuster out of order with respect to lower federal court judges, he explicitly exempted the Supreme Court. That, of course, only explains what a Senate minority can do. It’s the current political climate that tells us what Senate Republicans, whether in the majority or minority, are likely to do.

Now ask yourself a question about today’s Senate: How many of the 45 Republicans now in the Senate would break with their party and vote to end a filibuster of an Obama Supreme Court appointment? How many would risk a Tea Party primary opponent, or a talk radio onslaught, and step away from a fight to stop Obama from putting a pro-choice, “living Constitution” Justice on the Court for the next generation?

And if that meant leaving the Court with only eight justices—or seven, should a second vacancy develop—the Republican minority would be more than happy to live with that.

Given the zeal with which the Republican base argues that Obama is a lawless, Constitution-shredding chief executive, it is an easy step to argue that we should wait until a new chief executive is chosen in 2016.

If this analysis is correct, then what happens in November almost doesn’t matter. Yes, a Republican Senate takeover would give the GOP control of the Judiciary Committee, which means that all federal judicial nominations might die a slow but certain death. But even if the Democrats hold the Senate  . . . . the likeliest outcome of any Supreme Court nomination is a filibuster and a vacancy or two that will endure until the country chooses a new President.

Today's GOP is truly a menace to the country.

GOP Amnesia? Or is It Demagoguery?

I am constantly amazed by politicians who fail to remember their past statements.  Are they (i) suffering from amnesia, (ii) simply cretins or (iii) liars and demagogues?  None of the options is very comforting given the power these individuals weld.   Here's more commentary from Right Wing Watch:

After waging an unprecedented campaign of obstructionism against President Obama’s nominees, Republicans are now crying crocodile tears over a rules change that would end the filibuster on certain judicial nominees.

NBC News points out that Republicans are not blocking judicial nominees over “concerns about ideology or qualifications, but over the president’s ability to appoint ANYONE to these vacancies.” This unprecedented blockade leaves Democrats with few options, as dozens of nominees are left unable to receive a simple confirmation vote.

It’s even harder to be sympathetic to Senate Republicans when you remember that just a few years ago, many of the very same Republicans who are today filibustering President Obama’s nominees willy-nilly were vowing that they would never, ever filibuster judicial nominees. Some even declared that judicial filibusters were unconstitutional and un-American.

But that was before there was a Democrat in the White House.

After waging an unprecedented campaign of obstructionism against President Obama’s nominees, Republicans are now crying crocodile tears over a rules change that would end the filibuster on certain judicial nominees.
NBC News points out that Republicans are not blocking judicial nominees over “concerns about ideology or qualifications, but over the president’s ability to appoint ANYONE to these vacancies.” This unprecedented blockade leaves Democrats with few options, as dozens of nominees are left unable to receive a simple confirmation vote.
It’s even harder to be sympathetic to Senate Republicans when you remember that just a few years ago, many of the very same Republicans who are today filibustering President Obama’s nominees willy-nilly were vowing that they would never, ever filibuster judicial nominees. Some even declared that judicial filibusters were unconstitutional and un-American.
But that was before there was a Democrat in the White House.
- See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/twelve-republicans-who-broke-their-pledge-oppose-judicial-filibusters#sthash.Nn46rZtZ.dpuf

Filibuster Reform - A Return to Democracy in the Senate?

Some have decried the Democrat's use of the so-called "nuclear option" which removed the 60 vote requirement to move legislation forward in the United States Senate.   Rush Limbaugh, always the demagogue equated it with rape.  But the reality is that since Barack Obama's election in 2008, Republicans have shamelessly used a 60 vote filibuster rule to block nominations and judicial appointments that otherwise had the votes for passage.  It has been and endless scene of obstructionism.  Meanwhile, in the House of Representatives the so-called "Hastert Rule" - which requires majority support of the majority party - has been used for similar effect to kill legislation that has majority vote support.  These rules make a mockery of the vision for government crafted by the Founding Fathers.  The New York Times opines on the end of a significant portion of the 60 vote filibuster rule.  Here are excerpts:

For five years, Senate Republicans have refused to allow confirmation votes on dozens of perfectly qualified candidates nominated by President Obama for government positions. They tried to nullify entire federal agencies by denying them leaders. They abused Senate rules past the point of tolerance or responsibility. And so they were left enraged and threatening revenge on Thursday when a majority did the only logical thing and stripped away their power to block the president’s nominees. 

In a 52-to-48 vote that substantially altered the balance of power in Washington, the Senate changed its most infuriating rule and effectively ended the filibuster on executive and judicial appointments. From now on, if any senator tries to filibuster a presidential nominee, that filibuster can be stopped with a simple majority, not the 60-vote requirement of the past. That means a return to the democratic process of giving nominees an up-or-down vote, allowing them to be either confirmed or rejected by a simple majority.

This vote was long overdue. “I have waited 18 years for this moment,” said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa. 

It would have been unthinkable just a few months ago, when the majority leader, Harry Reid, was still holding out hope for a long-lasting deal with Republicans and insisting that federal judges, because of their lifetime appointments, should still be subject to supermajority thresholds. But Mr. Reid, along with all but three Senate Democrats, was pushed to act by the Republicans’ refusal to allow any appointments to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, just because they wanted to keep a conservative majority on that important court. 

Republicans warned that the rule change could haunt the Democrats if they lost the White House and the Senate. But the Constitution gives presidents the right to nominate top officials in their administration and name judges, and it says nothing about the ability of a Senate minority to stop them. (The practice barely existed before the 1970s.) From now on, voters will have to understand that presidents are likely to get their way on nominations if their party controls the Senate. 

Given the extreme degree of Republican obstruction during the Obama administration, the Democrats had little choice but to change the filibuster rule. As Mr. Reid noted on the floor, half of all filibusters waged against nominations in Senate history have occurred since Mr. Obama was elected. Twenty of his district court nominees were filibustered; only three such filibusters took place before he took office.
[T]he vote may lead to broader filibuster changes. A proposal by several younger Democratic senators to require “talking filibusters” — forcing objecting lawmakers to stand up at length and make their cases — may well gain steam now, and it could finally spell an end to logjams that have prevented important legislation from reaching votes.

Today’s vote was an appropriate use of that power, and it was necessary to turn the Senate back into a functioning legislative body.