YOU'RE THE RULERS, REWRITE THE RULES:

Frist Warns on Filibusters Over Bush Nominees (CARL HULSE, 11/12/04, NY Times)

Issuing a blunt warning to Democrats, the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, said Thursday that the newly strengthened Republican majority would not allow filibusters to block action on judicial nominees in President Bush's second term.

"One way or another, the filibuster of judicial nominees must end," Dr. Frist, Republican of Tennessee, said in a speech to the Federalist Society, a conservative lawyers' group. "The Senate must do what is good, what is right, what is reasonable and what is honorable." [...]

The Senate Rules Committee approved a plan last year that would gradually lower the threshold for filibusters against judicial nominees until a simple majority would allow a final vote. But a change in the rules requires 67 votes, and lacking anything near that support, the proposal never went to the floor.

Senator Trent Lott, the Mississippi Republican who is chairman of the Rules Committee, has been among the Republicans who have also suggested that the Republicans try to win a change by seeking a ruling from the chairman, a position that a Republican would hold, that filibusters against executive nominations are unconstitutional. A favorable ruling would require just a majority to uphold.

They are anti-constitutional. The Framers had no problem delineating when supermajorities are required.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 12, 2004 8:13 AM