When it is changing the rules so the minority cannot practice their rights.

What "rights"? The right to stop the system? The right to the
filibuster? There is no right to a filibuster. It's a senate rule.
The republicans are having to threaten to invoke the supreme law of the
land, the Constitution, to get the democrats to do their job. Minority
senators aren't being denied any rights at all.

What does "just vote dammit" have to do with the way the Congress
operates? It is not how we elect the President either.

Because that is what Congress does. Vote on appointments after an
appropriate, but not indefinite period of debate. Stalling the vote
indefinitely with the hope that it will just all go away is a move of
desperation. You keep saying that the far right doesn't have a
majority of votes. Then why are you scared of taking a vote?

Not 'my opinion only' but rather in the opinion of a large number of
people. A large enough number of people that it would be well to back
off and re-think the appointment, or figure out some way to ram it down
all their throats just like in a dictatorship.

A large but *minor* number of people. Don't equate this to a
dictatorship. A dictatorship is a single person ramming his policy
down EVERYONES throat. This is a situation of an elected president
requesting the the elected representatives of the states give an up or
down vote on judicial appointments. If the vote comes out 51 to 49,
that's not dictatorship. That's majority rule is a working
representative republic.


That is how a republic works... if you want 51% of the voters, or of
Congressmen, to be able to do anything they please, then you need to
drastically change the nature of our gov't... which is what Bush &
Cheney and their supporters are busily doing.

Anything they please within the bounds of law, yes. That IS what I
want. A representative government empowered to take action even if it
by the slimest of majorities. Anything else and we just have 500 some
odd congressmen sitting on the hill, drawing a paycheck and getting
nothing done. There is a referendum afterall on the president every 4
years and on every senator every 6 if you don't like what their doing.



... But it's not your job or priviledge to decide if
they are fascist. At this point it is the Senate's job and a minority
of Senators are holding up the process.

Which is the Senate's job & privilege.

Is that a question or a statement? It looks like a question except for
the period at the end. I'll assume the period is a typo and answer it
as a question. The Senate's job to "advise and consent" on judicial
appointments. Tradition has held that this consent take the form of an
actual vote, although the Constitution doesn't spell it out. So it is
the job of the Senate, by Constitutional law and tradition, to vote on
judicial appointment. In doing so, each and every elected senator has
the privilege of deciding if the appointee is suitable for the job. If
the president likes the guy enough to appoint and a majority of
Senators can't find anything wrong with the appointee, they should get
the job. That's how it should work anyway.


Sorry, but the way this appointment stuff is working is exactly how it's
supposed to work. The President is not supposed to be able to pack the
judiciary with any old body he pleases, not when he's a liberal and not
when he's a uber-Christian proto-fascist

That's not what anybody wants. Nobody wants the president to be able
to appoint his unemployed, drunk half-brother without an checks and
balances. What we DO want is the president's appointees to be able to
take the bench with the consent of at least 51 of the state's elected
representatives. That is checks and balances in action.

That many people are spittin' mad about how those darn libby-rull
Democrats are trying to ruin all of President Bush's plan, never mind
the Constitution and never mind that the Republicans did the exact same
thing, only worse, when they were in the minority...

You can't use the Constitution to defend the filibuster of judicial
nominees. And that IS a dare if you think you can. Go ahead, I'd like
to hear this.