So this is just a quick post, but I hope to see something that i might not have ever seen in my life in the next weeks. Our representatives in the government growing a spine, and then standing up and using it. Alito will ruin this nation if given enough time on the bench. He will kill Roe in a death and a thousand cuts. Don’t get me wrong he wont outlaw abortion, he will just make it so hard to get one that it might as well be outlawed. He is not a nice guy, and not the person we need in the supreme court. Lets just hope that the democrats and the moderate republicans can put aside party crap and get rid of this bastard. This may be the showdown we have been waiting for. Will Frist try to block filibusters, will they drop the nuke? It has yet to be seen, but lets hope so. Lets just get the country so sick and tired of these fuckers that the whole lot of them is voted right out of office. Lets usher in 2006 with a nice clean slate. I would love to see a bunch of moderates run this place.
“If he continuously, given his previous record, refused to answer questions and hid behind ‘I can’t answer this because it might come before me,’ it would increase the chances of a filibuster,” Democrat Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Democrats say they will not decide whether to filibuster or try to delay a committee vote until after the committee’s weeklong hearings that begin Monday.If Democrats attempt a filibuster based on Alito’s answers on abortion, at least one Republican is ready to vote for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s plan to ban judicial filibusters.
“I would consider that not only not an extraordinary circumstance, but a threat to the independence of the judiciary, and I would stop it in its tracks with my vote,” said GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
Graham, who spoke on “Fox News Sunday,” is one of the 14 senators seven from each party who joined together to end an earlier Senate showdown of the stalling tactic for the president’s judicial nominees.
That group of centrist lawmakers decided last year to support such filibusters only under “extraordinary circumstances.”
Republicans say there is no reason to delay or filibuster Alito, the federal appeals court judge who is Bush’s choice to succeed the retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. She often provided the swing vote on abortion, the death penalty, affirmative action and other contentious issues.
“I have not seen any rational basis for filibustering Judge Alito,” said the Judiciary Committee chairman, GOP Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, on CNN’s “Late Edition.”
Alito will face at least two days of questioning from senators; the nominee and the lawmakers planned to give their opening statements at noon EST on Monday, hours after Alito’s scheduled breakfast meeting at the White House with the president.