Senators quarrel over filibuster
Fed up with Republican efforts to block confirmation of President Barack Obama’s appointees, Democrats threatened Thursday to limit use of the filibuster.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid set up a showdown next week, scheduling votes on seven stalled nominations that require 60 votes to advance under a filibuster. If those votes fail, Reid vowed that Democrats would alter Senate rules on executive branch nominations to allow them to pass on majority votes.
The Senate’s GOP leader, Mitch McConnell, protested Reid’s threat, saying it would be “one of the most consequential changes to the United States Senate in the history of our nation.” The Kentucky senator charged that Democrats want to replace the Senate’s mandate of “advise and consent” with “sit down and shut up.”
Republicans warned that use of the so-called “nuclear option” would lead them to shut down the Senate for the rest of the congressional term and make the filibuster the centerpiece of their campaign in next year’s elections.
Royce Lamberth was chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court from 1995 to 2002. Among other things, the court oversees the National Security Agency’s secret surveillance programs, now under scrutiny following revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
“You’ve had judges like me, and the public perception of me is certainly not that I’m a rubber stamp for the government,” Lamberth said in an interview, laughing. As if to underscore the point, Lamberth had issued a ruling earlier in the day ordering the government to stop genital searches of Guantanamo Bay detainees who want to meet with their lawyers.