Out of My Mind

We don't give people a reason to vote for us, we don't give them a reason to vote at all, we don't give them a reason not to vote against the GOP destroyers of America because the elected Dems don't believe in doing anyting to stop them.

From Salon's War Room:

You can make an argument that the president is entitled to some senatorial deference when it comes to Cabinet picks. The guy runs the executive branch, so maybe there's a rebuttable presumption that he gets the people he wants to work for him there. But the judiciary isn't part of the executive branch. It's the independent third branch of government, and it's hard to articulate a reason why the Senate must defer to the president's judgment on how it should be staffed. So yes, Bush has nominated exactly the sort of nominee that Democrats probably expected. But that doesn't mean that they're bound -- legally, morally or otherwise -- to put such a nominee on the court.

To the contrary, most Democrats in the Senate have run for election and reelection by promising that they'd do what they could to prevent a president from packing the court with judges who will vote to overturn Roe. By voting against Alito -- as almost all of them now seem likely to do -- they're keeping their campaign promises just as surely as Bush did when he nominated him. As Feinstein put it today, "If one is pro-choice in this day and age, in this structure, one can't vote for Judge Alito. It is simply that simple."

So where's the filibuster? If no Dem can at least try to filibuster Alito there is no justification for the existence of the party. It has proven its irrelevance, it has acquiesced to one-party rule.

And, also from the War Room, yet another example of why the GOP is absolute scum -- as if it's needed or would change anything. And this too.