The "Thurmond rule" and the GOP's "heads I win, tails you lose" approach to government

Say, has anyone checked lately to see if Ol' Strom, that worthless, doody-sucking old pile of puke, is still dead?

The “[Thurmond] rule,” named for the late senator from South Carolina, Strom Thurmond, posits that, sometime in the summer in a presidential election year, no judges will be confirmed without the consent of the Republican and Democratic leaders and the Judiciary Committee chairman and ranking minority member.

Democrats have refused to recognize the rule and are known to flout it, blissfully confirming Republican presidents’ nominees well into the fall — thus cutting the number of vacancies that an incoming Democratic president might be able to fill.

The Republicans not only adhere to the rule but have been most adept at a fine four-corner stall until the rule might plausibly be invoked.

by Ken

Well, sure, his North Carolina neighbor Jesse Helms was worse, but that doesn't mean Strom didn't devote every ounce of his being to being the vilest, scummiest human being he had it in him to be, right up to the end. Remember those months (years?) when only the people closest to him, who kept him tightly protected off from public scrutiny, knew for sure whether the giant blob of protoplasm was genuinely alive or not?

Now Al Kamen reminds us, in this item from his Washington Post "In the Loop" column, that whatever the present state of his vital signs, the shame of South Carolina continues to befoul the Republic. To make it even more delicious, it's with the complicity of Senate Democrats, but then, what would you have them do? There is a principle involved, after all.

Still, while Senate Dems stand by their modest principle, Senate Republicans get to screw them both ways, no matter which party holds the White House. Brother Al --

Here come the judges

The Senate on Monday confirmed the last three of 17 judges under a deal cut by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Republican leader Mitch McConnell in March. The three nominees — one to an appellate court, the others to U.S. District Court seats — had been confirmed unanimously by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The three are Jacqueline H. Nguyen for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in California, John Z. Lee for a District Court seat in Illinois and Kristine G. Baker for a District Court seat in Arkansas. Nguyen would be the first Vietnamese American federal appeals court judge.

The action leaves 19 judicial nominees awaiting votes on the Senate floor, five of them for appeals courts and 14 for trial or district court slots.

While some observers — including, sadly, this column — too often dismiss the district judges as chopped liver, it should be noted that they are the ones who do the heavy lifting in keeping the federal courthouses running and case backlogs as low as possible.

As it turns out, many of those confirmed under the deal are filling seats in courthouses where there are judicial “emergencies,” meaning there aren’t enough judges to keep up with the work.

So the 19 pending nominees, all of them approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this year, will sweat it out until the August recess, when the “Thurmond rule” often shuts down the process.

The “rule,” named for the late senator from South Carolina . . . .

Which of course is where we came in, dear reader.

One more thing about those district judges "often dismissed as chopped liver." It is, of course, true that "they are the ones who do the heavy lifting in keeping the federal courthouses running and case backlogs as low as possible." They are also the "bench" for those circuit-court appeals judges, who in turn have their shot at positioning themselves for Supreme Court vacancies. The more the Republicans are able to pack the district courts with their scum and the Democrats are unable to get confirmation even for their inoffensive (except to out-of-touch-with-reality zealots) moderates, the more the weight of the judiciary is stacked against judicial reason.

At this point, while it remains theoretically possible, though practically speaking improbable, that the Obama administration may be able to get itself fully staffed by the time its first -- and possibly only -- term draws to a close, it's not possible that the president will succeed in replenishing the dangerously depleted federal judiciary. Imagine how the America-hating vermin who make up the Senate Republican Infestation must be congratulating themselves for successfully Democratic judicial appointments, keeping them to a bare minimum, until the sacred "Thurmond rule" kicks in and lifts the weight of the obstructionist burden from their shoulders.

I'm also thinking, as we take this stroll down memory lane revisiting the ghosts of Strom and Jesse, of the relief many of us felt when the pair of them finally had the decency to depart the Senate. (Strom was finally pronounced officially dead six months later, but Jesse, clinging to his reputation as the country's biggest son of a bitch, hung on for another five years.) Not to mention the same-cycle skedaddling of putrid Phil Gramm. Surely, we thought, the caliber of Republican senators couldn't help but be upgraded with those departures. The joke is on us.

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