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O'Reilly Ignores Republican Hypocrisy On Judicial Filibusters By: Steve - May 22, 2011 - 9:00am On Thursday the Senate voted by a 52-43 majority to end the GOP's filibuster of Professor Goodwin Liu's nomination to a federal appeal court - which, in the bizarro world that is the U.S. Senate, means that Liu's nomination will not move forward. The vote was entirely along party lines, except that Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) voted yea and Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) voted nay. Now think about this, just six years ago, Republicans sang a very different tune when it came to judicial filibusters. Senate Republicans almost unanimously declared filibusters of judicial nominees to be a horrific betrayal of their constitutional role. Many Republicans outright declared judicial filibusters to be unconstitutional. And here is a sample of how current GOP senators felt about such filibusters when a Republican was in the White House: -- Lamar Alexander (R-TN): "I would never filibuster any President's judicial nominee, period. I might vote against them, but I will always see they came to a vote."This willingness to declare something unconstitutional when it suits them and then pretend the Constitution says something else entirely when the political winds change is normal for the GOP. Sen. Nelson's vote against Liu, however, is utterly inexplicable. When Bush was naming judges, Nelson voted to end cloture on Judge Janice Rogers Brown, a radical tenther who once compared liberalism to "slavery" and Social Security to a "socialist revolution." It is impossible to imagine what standard Nelson applied that would keep a mainstream voice like Liu off the court, but allow Judge Brown to shape the law. And of course you never hear a word about any of this from O'Reilly, because Republicans are doing it now. But when Democrats were doing it under Bush, O'Reilly reported the hell out of it. O'Reilly did segment after segment about it back then, and even joined in with the Republicans calling for every judge to get an up or down vote. But now that Republicans are doing it, he is silent as a mouse. These people have no shame, I guess they think we forgot about all this stuff, and they were wrong. |