PAGE ONE OF WAPO - GOP Tilting Balance Of Power to the Right

[steve2470]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/25/AR2005052501997.html?sub=AR

By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 26, 2005; Page A01

As Democrats tell it, this week's compromise on judges was about much more than the federal courts. If President Bush and congressional allies had prevailed, they say, the balance of power would have been forever altered.

Yet, amid the partisan rhetoric, a little-noticed fact about modern politics has been lost: Republicans have already changed how the business of government gets done, in ways both profound and lasting.


Power in Numbers
A bipartisan group of senators reached a compromise agreement in which seven Democrats would use their votes to prevent filibusters on three of President Bush's judicial nominees in exchange for seven Republican votes against a ban on all judicial filibusters, known as the "nuclear option."

The campaign to prevent the Senate filibuster of the president's judicial nominations was simply the latest and most public example of similar transformations in Congress and the executive branch stretching back a decade. The common theme is to consolidate influence in a small circle of Republicans and to marginalize dissenting voices that would try to impede a conservative agenda.


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[ixion]

1. a conservative agenda?

Hardly. These thugs are many things, but conservative is NOT one of them. :grr:

[Avalux]

3. It should say "extremist agenda"

because that's exactly what it is. The American people need to hear that word tied to the far right over and over and over. Use Rove's tactic and make it stick.

[ClintonTyree]

2. More from the article...

This has coincided with a dramatic increase in overall government secrecy. In 1995, the government created about 3.6 million secrets. In 2004, there more than 15.5 million, according to the government's Information Security Oversight Office. The White House attributes the rise in information the public cannot see to the security threats in a post-Sept. 11, 2001, world.

But experts on government secrecy say it goes beyond protecting sensitive security documents, to creating new classes of information kept private and denying researchers access to documents from past presidents.

"We have never had this kind of control over information," said Allan J. Lichtman, a professor of history at American University. "It means policy is being made by a small clique without much public scrutiny."

Now, the Republicans, with the support of the White House, are looking to reshape the courts in their image. The Senate's bipartisan compromise on judges will cost the president a few of his nominees to the appeals court but will require him to secure only 50 votes for future picks for the Supreme Court and other openings. If Democrats filibuster, Bush and Republican senators can move again to pull the trigger on the "nuclear option" and, if successful, prevent the minority party from ever again using the filibuster on judges. "I will not hesitate to use it if necessary," Frist said this week.

So, to all those who think we won a great victory with "The Compromise", think again. We gave away the ranch on this one folks. The Pukes can and will go nuclear again, we've given then 3 judges that aren't fit for traffic court with the prospect of many more and "saved" the filibuster, with the caveat that it can never be used unless there's an "extreme" case, and in which case the nuclear option becomes instantly viable again for the Pukes.

When will the Democrats stand and fight? It would appear, never.