Justin's Political Corner

The upcoming debate over confirmation of U.S. Principal Deputy Solicitor General Sri Srinivasan to the country’s second highest court is seen by Democrats as a pivotal moment in the interconnected debates over gridlock of judicial nominations and Senate filibuster rules.

Srinivasan, President Obama’s nominee to fill the seat vacated in 2005 by now-Chief Justice John Roberts on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, where Republicans intend to quiz him on his judicial temperament and views on the Constitution.

“We haven’t had a new person on that court since 2006 or [200]7. Some say it’s a court more important than the Supreme Court of the United States. [Republicans have] blocked … new people coming on that court,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) told reporters Tuesday. “We’re going to have this young man — we hope that that can be done very quickly.”

Republicans recently forced Obama to withdraw his prior nominee to the powerful court, Caitlin Halligan, by filibustering her confirmation back in 2011 and again last month. The White House and Democratic leaders view Srinivasan, who has broad support among legal stars across the ideological spectrum, as a test case for whether the GOP will permit any nominee to be confirmed or whether they’d rather maintain the court’s notoriously high vacancy rate in order to preserve its conservative lean.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) pushed back on the accusations of GOP obstinacy, arguing that Republicans “have treated the president’s judicial nominees very, very fairly by any objective standard.”

“We just today confirmed the 10th judicial nomination of President Obama’s second term,” he told reporters Tuesday at his weekly briefing. “At this point in President Bush’s second term, he got zero judges. None. With regard to vacancies, about 75 percent of the vacancies that we have in the judiciary don’t even have nominees.”

All of those nominees were confirmed to courts less influential than the D.C. Circuit, where four of 11 active seats are vacant.

Reid has been ratcheting up the threats to weaken the filibuster with 51 votes mid-session if Republicans don’t ease up. If they filibuster Srinivasan — and they’ve offered no hints so far — Reid will face growing pressure to revisit the rules.

h/t: TPM DC

Yesterday’s 13-hour filibuster got Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) the spotlight on CNN, a #filibuster twitter feed, and lots of buzz. Unlike other GOP-led filibusters in recent years, Paul’s supposedly had a purpose other than blocking routine legislation and presidential appointments. In delaying John O. Brennan’s confirmation as head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Paul claimed that he wanted to spark discussion about the president’s policy for using drones on American soil, against American citizens. Now, even more people want him to run for president.

Paul received gushing admiration from progressives and conservatives alike. Atlantic Wire reporter Elspeth Reeve raves, “This Is What a Filibuster Should Be,” Slate magazine’s John Vorhees compares him to the protagonist in the iconic , feel-good political drama, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” and Cenk Uygur from The Young Turks tweets, “The Young Turks is literally trying to deliver a pizza to Rand Paul on the Senate floor. #filibuster going for 9 hours now, must be hungry.” Given the reason Paul ended his filibuster after 13 hours on the floor, perhaps Paul’s admirers should have delivered a porta-potty instead.

Paul appeals to some liberals due to their mutual mistrust of drones, support for loosening federal marijuana laws, and some of his stances on civil liberties. Many of us were also struck by the part of his unofficial Tea Party State of the Union response which declared that the U.S. “military spending is not immune to waste and fraud.” We all appreciate a politician who seems to stand by their principles — even when we disagree with them.

But …. WAIT! We progressives need to take a giant step back and remember who Rand Paul really is: An obstructionist, narrow minded teabagger who wants to destroy the government. Because when that warm, fuzzy Mr. -Smith-Goes-To-Washington glow subsides, be afraid, VERY afraid:

1. He’s got a “thing” for Strom Thurmond: Paul concluded his speech with an admiring allusion to the pro-segregation bigot and late Senator Strom Thurmond (D-SC), who once stood on the Senate floor and filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for a record 24 hours and 18 minutes:

“And I would go on for another 12 hours to try to break Strom Thurmond’s record, but I’ve discovered that there are some limits to filibustering, and I’m gonna have to take care of one of those in a few minutes here.”

So why did Paul fall 11 hours and 42 minutes short of beating Thurmond’s record? According to Julie Weiner’s piece in Vanity Fair, Thurmond did take one bathroom break “just once, during a few-minute break to update the Congressional Record.” In addition, he brought provisions, dehydrated himself in a steam room so he wouldn’t need to pee, and read state statutes and other government texts aloud. Back then, men were men, racists were “Racists” with a capital “R,” and farm animals were skeered sh*tless.

2. He opposes the Civil Rights Act: Speaking of the Civil Rights Act (which evolved into the one signed by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964), Rand Paul opposes that, too. In an April 17th, 2010 interview with the Courier-Journal’s editorial board in Louisville, KY, Paul responded as follows to a question about whether he would have supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964:

I like the Civil Rights Act in the sense that it ended discrimination in all public domains, and I’m, um, all in favor of that … [trails off, editor prompts, “But?” and Paul laughs] I don’t like the idea of telling private business owners … I abhor racism, I think it’s a bad business decision to exclude anyone from a restaurant … BUT, at the same time, I do believe in private ownership. But I think that absolutely there should be no discrimination in anything that gets public funding.

The part about how “there should be no discrimination in anything that gets public funding” sounds reasonable, until you consider that Paul doesn’t think ANYthing should get public funding. Paul also reduces the Jim Crow era’s myriad injustices to “a bad business decision,” because “in a free society, we will tolerate boorish people who have abhorrent behavior.”

Which brings us to this writer’s essential issue with Libertarianism: If the exercise of one person’s freedom violates the freedom of another, then the bigger, stronger, and richer will always win, and that isn’t a government, that’s a nasty, brutish and Hobbesian existence.

3. … AND he opposes the Americans for Disabilities Act (ADA): When NPR’s Robert Siegel interviewed Paul a month later on “All Things Considered,” Paul stuck his foot in his mouth yet AGAIN to reveal that he believes businesses should be allowed to discriminate against disabled folks as well. Though I suppose it technically doesn’t qualify as a “gaffe” when you speak correctly and just happen to have views that are utterly vile:

Right. I think a lot of things could be handled locally. For example, I think that we should try to do everything we can to allow for people with disabilities and handicaps. You know, we do it in our office with wheelchair ramps and things like that. I think if you have a two-story office and you hire someone who’s handicapped, it might be reasonable to let him have an office on the first floor rather than the government saying you have to have a $100,000 elevator. And I think when you get to the solutions like that, the more local the better, and the more common sense the decisions are, rather than having a federal government make those decisions.

Yes, it’s expensive to install an elevator or do major remodelling to help customers and employees with special needs, and it can be hard for smaller companies. But it’s a lot harder to live with disabilities day in and day out, and the least we can do is to modify our buildings so everyone can fully participate in our society with a measure of dignity. Plus, it’s strange how conservatives always mention how hard regulations are on “small businesses,” but they never suggest providing seed money to bring these mom and pops into compliance?

4. He opposes Obamacare: Despite the recent ruling from the United States’ conservative-leaning Supreme Court, Paul insists that the Patient Protection and Affordable Healthcare Act is unconstitutional. According to Scott Wong from Politico, “Obamacare is wrong for Americans. It will destroy our healthcare system.” Um … as if the current healthcare system hasn’t already destroyed our healthcare system? Paul also apparently thinks that he and his fellow teabagger extremists in the Republican Party are above the laws of our land and can declare things unconstitutional, even after our Supreme Court has had what is supposed to be the final say:

“Just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be ‘constitutional’ does not make it so. The whole thing remains unconstitutional,” Paul said. “While the court may have erroneously come to the conclusion that the law is allowable, it certainly does nothing to make this mandate or government takeover of our health care right.”

Oh, and Paul’s also one of those conspiracy theory nut-jobs who thinks that Obamacare will “deputize” doctors to spy on patients and snitch on gun owners, so the U.S. government can record names in massive database. Never mind that this theory has been debunked numerous times

5. He opposes gun safety laws: And speaking of guns, guess where Paul stands on gun safety laws? Hint: Back in January, Mollie Reilly from the Huffington Post reported that the Kentucky Senator shared the outline of his pro-gun strategy for challenging President Obama’s executive orders on gun safety with Fox News’ Sean Hannity.:

“Our founding fathers were very concerned about us having separation of powers. They didn’t want to let the president become a king. In this bill, [that he introduced] We will nullify anything the president does that smacks of legislation.”

Because, you know how Paul’s fellow party members clamped down when Obama’s predecessor overstepped his bounds, started an illegal war, imprisoned suspected terrorists without due process or trials, and instituted invasive search procedures in all of our airports … oh wait … they never did that.

On Thursday — sounding all bright, chipper, well-rested, and (presumably) empty-bladdered the morning after his 13-hour screed, Paul appeared on Glenn Beck’s radio show and confided that — although he doesn’t want Obama to have access to lethal weapons that could kill American citizens — he’s carrying around some mysterious lethal weapon himself:

“I’m not talking about people who are carrying a rifle around — that would be half of the South, myself included, and half of my staff,”

Yeah, we don’t need no stinkin’ gun safety laws. And in case you have ANY doubt about how Paul feels about guns and our president, here’s the “STOP Obama’s Gun Ban” email he endorsed with the image of a gun pointed at Barack Obama’s head.

6. He supports international tax dodgers: Rand Paul doesn’t just support privacy rights for potential terrorists, he also wants to help tax dodgers.

7. He opposes labor rights: Ian Milheiser from Think Progress observed on Thursday that “Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) took several minutes out of his lengthy talking filibuster” to praise a 1905 Supreme Court decision for Lochner vs. New York, which rejected a New York state law limiting bakers’ work weeks to 60 hours per week.

This case is almost universally regarded as among THE WORST decisions that ever came from the bench. Even the hardcore conservative Robert Bork — a failed Reagan era Supreme Court nominee – called the decision an “abomination” that “lives in the law as the symbol, indeed the quintessence of judicial usurpation of power.”

8. He’s Anti-Choice: Paul constantly talks about “liberty” and “freedom.” Yet, here’s another @sshole in the GOP who rejects the ultimate freedom for women: The freedom to make reproductive choices, reach their full personal and economic potential, and decide when (if ever) to have children … as men do. And (yawn) his casual dismissal of the formidable, charismatic, and well-qualified Ashley Judd’s potential run against his colleague and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) as “articulate” smacks of sexism.

9. He opposes marital equality: So much for the “liberty” Paul’s always going on and on about.

10. He opposes automatic birthright citizenship: So much for Paul’s supposed reverence for the U.S. Constitution and our slave-owning founding fathers. If Paul has his way, babies born on American soil won’t grow up to be U.S. citizens. 

h/t: AddictingInfo.org

While Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) undoubtedly won the DC news cycle yesterday with his twelve-hour long filibuster against CIA Director nominee John Brennan, his opposition to drones is not as all-encompassing as you would think.

The coverage of the filibuster fixated on what appeared to be Paul’s unwavering opposition to the use of unmanned vehicles, commonly called drones. As Paul made clear, though, he was only speaking in opposition to their use in anarrow sense, as part of a targeted killing ordered against a U.S. citizen on American soil.

While the White House has so far ignored calls to declassify the Department of Justice memos laying out the administration’s legal argument, it has explained that drone strikes could not Constitutionally be carried out against an individual who was not an imminent threat, effectively answering Paul’s limited question.

Paul’s opposition to the use of drones began with his concerns about their use for surveillance purposes against U.S. citizens without a warrant. To this effect, Paul introduced in 2012 what he called the “Preserving Freedom From Unwarranted Surveillance Act,” that would ”prohibit the use of drones by the government” without a warrant. The Pentagon has pushed back against the need for this new legislation, arguing that the laws that apply to manned aircraft — such as small airplanes and helicopters — would necessarily apply to unmanned drones as well.

That worry about drones is not universal for Paul, however, as he’s less concerned when it comes to enforcing border security via drone. Laying out his stance on comprehensive immigration reform, Paul published an op-ed in the Washington Times making clear that he felt that border security had to be addressed before a path to citizenship could be enacted:

Border security, including drones, satellite and physical barriers, vigilant deportation of criminals and increased patrols would begin immediately and would be assessed at the end of one year by an investigator general from the Government Accountability Office.

Though he did not make it clear, it can be assumed that Paul was referring to drones of the unarmed variety, rather than advocating launching Hellfire missiles at immigrants attempting to cross the border.

h/t: Hayes Brown at Think Progress Security

Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin signaled Wednesday it may already be time to reopen the debate about the chamber’s rules, given Republicans have attempted to or plan to filibuster three presidential appointments in the month and a half since the chamber approved modest filibuster changes.

At the start of this Congress in January, Senate leaders reached a bipartisan agreement to slightly alter the chamber’s rules in a bid to make the Senate work more efficiently.

“We have tried at the beginning of this Senate session to avoid this kind of filibuster confrontation. The last several years we have had over 400 filibusters — a record number of filibusters in the Senate,” Durbin said.

“I hate to suggest this, but if this is an indication of where we’re headed, we need to revisit the rules again,” the Illinois Democrat said. “We need to go back to it again. I’m sorry to say it because I — was hopeful that a bipartisan approach to dealing with these issues would work.”

“It’s the best thing for this chamber, for the people serving here and the history of this institution,” Durbin said of the bipartisan arrangement. “But if this Caitlin Halligan nomination is an indication of things to come, we’ve got to revisit the rules.”

Halligan’s nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has been among the most contentious of President Barack Obama’s tenure. In 2011, she failed to garner the 60 votes needed to overcome Republican opposition in 2011, but Obama renominated her this year. Senate Republicans again successfully filibustered Halligan’s nomination Wednesday morning, by a vote of 51-41. Sixty votes were needed.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., reiterated his opposition to Halligan on Wednesday morning.

“I’ll be voting against cloture on this nomination. I urge my colleagues to do the same,” McConnell said. “Our decision to do so is not unprecedented. Far from it. Many of our Democratic colleagues who are expressing shock and utter amazement that we would deny cloture on Ms. Halligan’s nomination a second time, felt absolutely no compunction about repeatedly denying cloture on Miguel Estrada’s nomination to the same court.”

In invoking Estrada’s name, McConnell is connecting Halligan to the most famous nominee of the judicial nomination feuds during the George W. Bush administration.

h/t: Roll Call

The Huffington Post reports that Senate Leaders Harry Reid (D-NV) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) reached a deal today to support minor — and in some cases, temporary — changes to the Senate Rules,rather than push through the more robust reforms championed by many Democratic senators. The language of the deal, which is divided into two separate resolutions, is available here and here.

Filibuster reform is in trouble, proponents warn, at the hands of a scaled-back proposal they say would enhance rather than diminish the Senate minority’s power to obstruct.

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) says his proposal to force filibustering senators to occupy the floor and speak ceaselessly could be in jeopardy, thanks to a newbipartisan filibuster package that he and his ally Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) argue would do more harm than good to the cause.

“Normally the majority party has a right to determine the agenda of the Senate. They don’t have the right to pass bills. That’s up to the majority of the Senate,” Udall said on the floor Wednesday. “But then the majority leader should have the right to bring a bill to the floor of the Senate. And that has been denied over and over again by the minority party. That’s wrong.”

The dueling proposal, spearheaded by longtime Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Carl Levin (D-MI), would make it somewhat tougher for the minority to block debate on legislation but also guarantee them two amendments on bills — regardless of relevancy — which proponents of a weaker filibuster say defeats the purpose.

“It’s a step backward rather than a step forward,” a Merkley aide said. “It doesn’t attack the core of the matter. It doesn’t include a talking filibuster. And it allows the minority to kill legislation with poison pill amendments. It keeps all the tools minority has to obstruct and then gives them another tool.”

Early in December, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said filibuster reform will happen with or without Republican support, and Merkley-Udall was the plan on the table. But the unveiling of the McCain-Levin late December — and the optics of a partisan versus bipartisan solution — scrambled the game for reformers.

If Reid decides to pursue McCain-Levin instead of the talking filibuster plan, “Senator Merkley will encourage others to vote against the bill,” his aide said. It’s not yet clear that proposal has the super-majority of votes required to pass, but multiple Democratic senators have said there are at least 51 votes for reform.

h/t: Sahil Kapur at TPM

On the Senate floor Monday afternoon, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell railed against his counterpart, Harry Reid, and a “cohort of short-sighted Senate sophomores,” for proposing to modify the Senate’s filibuster rules on the first day of the 113th Congress to limit the extent to which the minority can gum up legislative business.

“Does [Reid] believe that on the day he finds himself in the minority once again that he should no longer be heard?” McConnell asked, “Or does he think that Democrats will remain in the majority from now until the end of time?”

In a Monday interview, one of the supposedly short-sighted sophomores said, contra McConnell, the reforms Democrats are proposing could in theory go much farther, but are being designed with future power shifts in mind.

“The point I would make is that I’ve said from the outset is that a test of a good proposal is whether or not you could live with serving under it in the minority,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR). “That’s why the talking filibuster is the right way to go. McConnell has broken the social contract. His team, under his leadership, uses it constantly and silently, out of public sight. Really the proposal I put forward restores the basic elements that existed in the past, and I’m quite happy to live under that structure as a minority. … [That] has been part of every conversation I’ve had with colleagues. … If we’re in the minority and we’re blocking something, we should be accountable to the public.”

Changes to the Senate rules are rare, typically minor, and usually require 67 votes be implemented. But Democrats can avail themselves of a complicated, arcane procedure in January and amend the rules as they choose with an easier 50-plus-one majority.

“If a bare majority can now proceed to any bill it chooses, and once on that bill, the majority leader, all by himself, can shut out all amendments that aren’t to his liking, then those who elected us to advocate for their views will have lost their voice in the legislative process,” McConnell said.

McConnell warned that Reid and fellow Democrats might come to regret the power move in future Congresses.

But two ideas have wide support in the Democratic caucus. The first, more cursory change, would make what’s known as the “motion to proceed” non-debatable. That means the minority could no longer block debate on legislation, while holding out for guarantees on amendment votes or legislative changes to the underlying bill.

The other would recreate a status quo ante, where filibustering senators would be required to hold the floor and draw public attention to their obstruction efforts. “If they want a filibuster, stand and talk about it,” Reid said.

That would still leave the GOP minority plenty of opportunities to obstruct — and Republicans are threatening to take them. But Reid, who opposed Merkley’s efforts in 2010, has come around, and conceded that his junior caucus members had it right all along. The only question now is whether Reid can round up 51 votes for establishing a precedent that could be used against his own party in future Congresses.

“The Republican leader thinks things are going well here. He’s in a distinct minority because things aren’t going well around here,” Reid said. “Lyndon Johnson: one cloture. Reid: 386. That says it all.”

h/t: Brian Beutler at TPM

Senate Democrats will enter the new year with an expanded majority of 55-45, having gained two seats in the election. They may be emboldened, but Republicans will retain the ability to slow down or halt their agenda with the use of the filibuster, which requires 41 senators.

If Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell continues to wield the filibuster as routinely as he did in President Obama’s first term, Majority Leader Harry Reid will need to pick off at least five Republican senators to advance initiatives.

Susan Collins

The most moderate Republican in the Senate — or as Democrats argue, the only one left — Collins will be Reid’s first target when he needs GOP votes.

During Obama’s first term, the Maine Republican broke with her party more often than any of her remaining colleagues, and now that her state — and the country — has resoundingly re-elected the president, she has plenty of reasons to continue.

Also noteworthy: Collins is up for re-election in 2014, and Democrats will be eagerly watching for any of her votes or positions they can use to paint her as out of touch with her liberal state.

Lisa Murkowski

The Alaska Republican has been less loyal to party’s leaders since she lost her GOP primary race in 2010 but won re-election as a write-in candidate.

Murkowski later broke with the GOP on a series of defining votes, such as the DREAM Act, repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” and the Paul Ryan budget. This year, she spoke out on her party’sneed to stop alienating women voters and made a public showing of support for Democrats against House and Senate Republican leaders on the Violence Against Women Act.

Dean Heller

Heller, who was appointed to replace Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) last year, held his seat in a close contest. Given his slim margin of victory and the fact that his constituents voted by a significant margin to send Obama back to the White House, Heller will have an incentive not to be seen as an ongoing thorn in the president’s side as he works to build a reputation in the chamber.

Mark Kirk

Even as he projects an image as a relative moderate, Kirk’s votes have been difficult to predict as he has also worked to gain the trust of the conservative movement. The Illinois Republican’s votes for the Ryan budget and for repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” reflect that dynamic.

But as a Republican from a solidly liberal state, and the first person elected to fill Barack Obama’s old seat, Kirk has motivation not to be seen as a partisan ideologue. He cultivated a relatively moderate voting record as congressmen, and has occasionally been willing to break with his party as senator, making him a winnable vote for Reid.

Lindsey Graham

Graham is a tricky target because he is up for re-election in bright red South Carolina in 2014. But the senator has, in recent years, collaborated with Democrats on major issues like immigration and climate change, and in the wake of Obama’s re-election, is urging his party to soften its opposition on immigration reform in order to win back Hispanics. He has also been vocal about his support for raising tax revenues to reduce the debt.

If Graham gets hounded by a credible primary challenger early next cycle, his desire for cooperation could prove short-lived. But if he fends off an intra-party battle for his seat, the South Carolinian could reignite his bipartisan streak and become a central figure in advancing and molding Obama’s key second term initiatives.

h/t: Sahil Kapur at TPM

Over at Slate, Doug Kendall breaks down just how badly President Obama’s judicial nominees have been treated due to filibusters led by one or more Senate Republicans. “The average confirmation time for uncontroversial circuit court nominees rose from 64.5 days under Reagan to 227.3 days under Obama… . Similarly, the average waiting time for uncontroversial district court nominees increased from 69.9 days under Reagan to 204.8 days under President Obama. And the number of district court nominees who wait more than 200 days has doubled from George W.’s time to Obama’s.” Kendall uses the Congressional Research Service’s definition of an uncontroversial nominee to reach these numbers, which is a nominee who receives “little or no opposition when votes are actually cast in the Senate Judiciary Committee and on the Senate floor.”

H/T: Ian Millhiser at Think Progress Justice