Monsters from the Id

MoveOn.Org is participating in a letter-writing campaign to stop the Republican "nuclear option" regarding President Bush's judicial nominees. That's the tactic being considered by Republican leadership in the Senate that would disallow filibustering in those debates - that is, contrary to over 200 years of Senatorial practice, today's Republican Senatorial leadership wants to forbid the Democrats from debating the qualifications of judicial nominees until everyone is satisfied.

This is, as usual for the Republican Congressional leadership, schoolyard rules. Someone has an objection to what you're doing? You pound him into the ground and do as you like anyway. Children who do that get written about in parenting magazines in hand-wringing articles asking how it can be stopped. Old Republican men who do it get elected.

So I wrote this letter to USA Today:

Some conservative pundits and lawmakers have asserted that if the Republican party in Congress decides to disallow filibustering of judicial nominees, it will be no more than a necessary corrective to Democratic partisan heel-dragging.

Nonsense.

Let's be very clear about this - America is predicated on the notion that all points of view, even (or especially) those not in power, are entitled to a hearing and may not be stifled in any context. The American Senate is predicated on the notion that minority points of view must be permitted their rights, up to and including the right to block legislation, in order to preserve some stability in the exercise of power.

Given this, the Republican so-called "nuclear option" is nothing more than a power grab. One party now has control of the executive and legislative branches of government and now seeks fuller control of congress as well as control of the judicial branch so that its hold on power can be made longer or even permanent. For a party that constantly harps on its notion of "freedom," this is positively totalitarian.

Never mind that the judicial nominees in question are generally extremists and lacking in qualifications; Republican tactics in this case are unfair, anti-democratic and anti-American and must be stopped immediately.

Benshlomo says, Power corrupts, but some animals are more corruptible than others.