Another Senate Confirmation Battle To Look Forward To Tuesday

As you've been reading, Senate Republicans, lead by the KKK's own Jeff Sessions, are conducting a systematic obstructionist campaign against every Obama judicial nomination. Tuesday they'll be filibustering David Hamilton, Obama's first nominee... from last March. When Obama-- at the urging of "notorious radicals" Evan Bayh and Dick Lugar-- nominated him, the media greeted the announcement with a big yawn and basically announced that Obama the pick showed that Obama would be appointing qualified and uncontroversial judges. To Jeff Sessions, however, anything vaguely to the left of an Imperial Wizard, a Grand Dragon or an Alabama Kludd is controversial. (Sessions himself was rejected by the Senate for a judicial position after his KKK sympathies were exposed. As ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, he's dragged the GOP into a reign of revenge.)

The Republicans have managed to hold up all of Obama's nominations for months, although when they are finally forced onto the floor for a vote, they pass either without objection or only with the objections of a handful of the most extreme maniacs. Monday for example, the Senate took up two nominations that had been backed up for months, Andre M. Davis, of Maryland, to be U.S. Circuit Judge for the Fourth Circuit (originally nominated by President Clinton and-- had the Republicans not stonewalled the nomination-- he would have been the first-ever African American on the 4th Circuit) and Charlene Edwards Honeywell, of Florida, to be U.S. District Judge for the Middle District of Florida. Honeywell, who had originally been appointed to a judgeship by Jeb Bush, was confirmed 88-1. Davis was another matter. The Ku Klux Klan Kaucus just wouldn't go for it and 16 of them, led by Sessions, of course, voted no. Most of the most unabashed racists in the Senate either skipped the vote or, enjoyed voting against an African-American man for a lifetime position. Among the ones who followed Sessions down that path are neo-Confederates and secessionists David Diapers Vitter (R-LA), Richard Shelby (R-AL), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Jim DeMint (R-SC), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Jim Bunning (R-KY) and weird sex maniac Ensign (R-NV). As a gage of how racist these kooks are, even arch-obstructionists Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Miss McConnell (R-KY) and Roger Wicker (R-MS) voted to confirm Davis!

So that takes us back to Hamilton and Reid's filing of cloture last Tuesday. Republicans seem to be opposing him because he doesn't back their jihad against Choice and because he won't commit to tearing down the wall between Church and State. They've totally gone around the bend. And it looks like they've taken reactionary Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson with them. He's voting "no" and he may join the actual filibuster as well. Several Republicans have already assured Reid, Bayh and Lugar that they plan to vote for cloture and for Hamilton.