Is Sen. Frist's Poll on Judicial Nominees in line with the Constitution?

[RageSk8]

Sen. Frist (http://frist.senate.gov/ ) put up a poll earlier today on his webpage asking "Should the President's nominees to the federal bench be allowed an up or down vote on confirmation as specified in the constitution?". Now, before I go into his "tricky web games", where the hell in the constitution does it say judicial nominees should or must be given an "up or down" vote? It doesn't! Marstonalia (http://marston.blogspot.com/#106867494093101470) says this:

The problem with the question is that it signals a woeful ignorance of what is actually "in the Constitution," and this from the person whom Senate Republicans chose to be their leader.

Tell me, Mr. Frist, where does it "specify in the Constitution" that nominees to the federal bench should be "allowed an up or down vote." And if you find the passage where it "specifies" an "up or down vote," then make sure that you're (a) not high, (b) not reading the GOP talking points on judges, and (c) not tired and delusional from pretending to debate judges for 30 hours straight. The Constitution does not specify precise decision rules about how judges are to be confirmed. Sorry, Mr. Frist. It ain't there.

Frankly, I just love it when people who fill the air with fine phrases about "following the law" can't even state with any degree of accuracy what the law actually is. In fact, I think that this episode gives a clue as to what "following the law" means for Frist and his fellow partisans: following the rules that you wish were actually written down somewhere but aren't, and then fudging the difference between the two conditions.

Frist is a fake textualist. Oh well.

It is bad enough the Republican majority leader of the Senate doesn't know the constitution and misrepresents it to the people, but he goes further.

Originally this question received a majority of "no" votes (this is at least partly due to Artrios (http://www.atrios.blogspot.com/) pointing out the pull on his web page. Now Frist, or someone who works for him, reset the poll after seeing that the "yes" vote he wanted was not up. Wait, it gets better.

After the poll once again started going against him, he changed the question (without resetting the poll numbers) to "Should the Senate minority block the body's Constitutional duty to provide the President's judicial nominees with an up or down vote?" WTF? Well, Frist's poll after this move went in his direction.

So to sum up: Frist does not understand the constitution. Frist pretty much made up a Constitutional requirement of a "up or down vote". Frist changed his poll twice to have it go his way.

ps: The fact that Artrios posted this poll on his liberal leaning blog means absolutely nothing. The purpose of polls is to get a feel of the general reaction of voters, liberals are voters. And, by the way, without a doubt conserveative bloggers who read Artrios, responded with similar efforts on the poll.

Any question about the validity of the poll results in respect to showing the general public opinion is irrelevent. The public couldn't give a valid opinion to begin with because the question "made up" Constitutional requirements about judicial nominees.

 

[Zero]

Polls often have questions that misstate the issue in order to get the desired response. Combine that with the tricks that this administration has played with the facts, and there is nothing surprising here.

 

[HAVOC451]

The thing that gets me is that 176 or so judges have been approved. Only 4 have been rejected by the Dems. Each of those four is an extremist IMO.

 

[Zero]

Originally posted by HAVOC451
The thing that gets me is that 176 or so judges have been approved. Only 4 have been rejected by the Dems. Each of those four is an extremist IMO.

Notice, also, how blatantly racist and sexist the some memers of the Republican Party are. They intentionally nominate black, Hispanic, and women judges who they know are going to be rejected, in order to 1) pretend to be in favor of racial diversity, and 2) to charge that the Dems are rejecting their choices for race or gender reasons. The funny thing is when some members of the right-wing blast the Dems for not supporting unqualified judges...because a Dem should support ANY Hispanic, or woman, or black, just because of their sikin or genitals.

In other words, some Republicans are bashing the Democrats for not being racist...ironic, isn't it?

 

[RageSk8]

Oh my God, I can't believe I missed this. When Sen. Frist changed the question without changing the poll numbers, he REVERSED which answer agreed with him(before he changed the poll he wanted "yes", after he changed the question, but again not the numbers!, he wanted "no"). So, in other words, he still got the answer he didn't want. Tricky bastard. It is worse than I thought, and it gets worse!

No doubt because liberal bloggers were all over this story, the "yes" vote overpowered the" no" vote. Guess what Frist did now? He changed the question back to the original in his archive! In other words, after the poll went against him three times, he simply changed the question back to where the answer he wanted was "yes". So, Sen. Frist manipulated his already constitutionally inaccurate poll 4 times just to get the answer he wanted!

 

[RageSk8]

Made the News! http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=584&ncid=584&e=10&u=/nm/20031113/pl_nm/congress_judges_poll_dc

-- First, temporarily daunting "No" voters, the question was flipped, to: "Should the Senate be prevented from exercising its Constitutional duty to provide the president's judicial nominees with an up or down vote?"

-- It was soon restored to the original sense, if not wording, then reading: "Should the Senate exercise its Constitutional duty to provide the president's judicial nominees with an up or down vote?"

-- But a few hours later, the question was again coming from the opposite tack, asking: "Should the Senate minority block the body's Constitutional duty to provide the president's judicial nominees with an up or down vote?"

-- Finally, late Wednesday night, with thousands of votes pouring in every minute, the poll was closed and the result recorded as: "Should the Senate perform its constitutional duty to provide the president's judicial nominees with an up or down vote. Yes: 54 percent. No: 46 percent. 106,615 votes."

Frist's spokesman, Bob Stevenson, denied on Thursday the poll had been changed to try to ensure any particular result, attributing the initial back-and-forth to efforts to foil the automatic voting programs that were being used.

 

[Ganshauk]

Ok. Delete your post. Now. I find this offensive and derogatory. I am a republican. This statement is reflective upon me. Not to metion wrong.

I think we are nominating people who are suited to the job and REPRESENTATIVE of our nation. It is the racist democrats who are voting against them.

Remeber this :

Lincoln was a republican.

The slave states (Confederacy) were Democrats.

Things haven't changed much, just the tactics.

 

[Zero]

Originally posted by Ganshauk
Ok. Delete your post. Now. I find this offensive and derogatory. I am a republican. This statement is reflective upon me. Not to metion wrong.

I think we are nominating people who are suited to the job and REPRESENTATIVE of our nation. It is the racist democrats who are voting against them.

Remeber this :

Lincoln was a republican.

The slave states (Confederacy) were Democrats.

Things haven't changed much, just the tactics.

LOL!

You forget that the Republicans picked up a big chunk of the Southern racists in the 60s? Have you forgotten?

 

[RageSk8]

I think we are nominating people who are suited to the job and REPRESENTATIVE of our nation. It is the racist democrats who are voting against them.

Well no. All of the justives that the democrats are filibustering are FAR to the right, much further than the majority of people in the US. For a good article detailing why the Republicans are digging themselves into a whole by being so combative for these judges is outlined at Salon: http://salon.com/news/feature/2003/11/13/filibuster/index.html

You will have to watch about a 10 second internet commercial to gain access to the whole article. Once the actual views of these Justices become known by the common American, the common American will thank the Democrats.

 

[Zero]

Originally posted by Ganshauk
Ok. Delete your post. Now. I find this offensive and derogatory. I am a republican. This statement is reflective upon me. Not to metion wrong.

I edited it...and I apologise. Just because you make racially insensitive statements, it doesn't mean you ARE a racist, and it certainly doesn't mean that all Republicans are...

 

[russ_watters]

Originally posted by Zero
Notice, also, how blatantly racist and sexist the some memers of the Republican Party are. They intentionally nominate black, Hispanic, and women judges who they know are going to be rejected, in order to 1) pretend to be in favor of racial diversity, and 2) to charge that the Dems are rejecting their choices for race or gender reasons. The funny thing is when some members of the right-wing blast the Dems for not supporting unqualified judges...because a Dem should support ANY Hispanic, or woman, or black, just because of their sikin or genitals.

In other words, some Republicans are bashing the Democrats for not being racist...ironic, isn't it?

The other side of the coin is even worse: the deomcrats nominate people based largely on their race/sex, etc. and not their qualifications, and the republicans can't vote against them even though they are unqualified. What you end up with is a very diverse group of wholly unqualified advisors. Clinton had some serious problems with his cabinet due to his selection policies.

The democrats have the race card to play, not the republicans.

 

[Zero]

Originally posted by russ_watters
The other side of the coin is even worse: the deomcrats nominate people based largely on their race/sex, etc. and not their qualifications, and the republicans can't vote against them even though they are unqualified. What you end up with is a very diverse group of wholly unqualified advisors. Clinton had some serious problems with his cabinet due to his selection policies.

The democrats have the race card to play, not the republicans.

We'll just have to agree to disagree, Russ...Clinton wasn't anything like perfect, but overall he was better than Bush is now. Which is more cynical, what you accuse Clinton of, or Bush nominating unqualified people specifically to create the situation that exists? It appears that he looked far and wide to find nominees that were minorities, and would never, ever be allowed without a fight, so that he could play the race card.

 

[Njorl]

Originally posted by russ_watters
The other side of the coin is even worse: the deomcrats nominate people based largely on their race/sex, etc. and not their qualifications, and the republicans can't vote against them even though they are unqualified. What you end up with is a very diverse group of wholly unqualified advisors. Clinton had some serious problems with his cabinet due to his selection policies.

They had no qualms about rejecting the eminently qualified Ronnie White.

The democrats have the race card to play, not the republicans.

That assumes that there are more people concerned about racism than there are racists. While I believe that staunch racists are no longer a majority, I think they still outnumber the people who are offended by racism.

Njorl