DownWithTyranny!: The DAmN Party (aka GOP) rampages onward in its take-no-prisoners assault on truth, justice, and the American way

Confirmation yesterday by the Senate Judiciary Committee was the second step toward the failure of Nina Pillard's nomination to the District Circuit Court of Appeals, which began with the president's announcement of her nomination.

by Ken

I had to really scrutinize a washingtonpost.com "Fix" item the other day, "Ted Cruz vs. House Republicans," to grasp the nature of the reported rupture in the Capitol Hill GOP, occasioned by the exhortation of Texas Sen. Ted "Rock Brain" Cruz to his fellow GOP-ers in the House to stand firm when the Senate strips their latest legislative stratagem in their unrelenting war to Destroy America Now (DAmN), the defunding of the new health-care law, from the stopgap spending bill that would prevent a government shutdown, and sends the continuing-resolution bill back to the House.

Me, I thought it was nothing more than a statement of solidarity among the congressional Princelings of Darkness. Obviously the Senate isn't going to go along with the madness, and so it's going to be left to the two houses of Congress to figure out where to go from there. All Senator Rock Brain was doing, as far as I could tell, was exhorting his House co-partisans to stand fast in waging their fight against America.

This, however, is where you need to be able to think like a DAmN-er and see the world through that dark, twisted filter. Viewing that way, apparently, what you see is Senator Rock Brain thumbing his nose at his psychopathic House colleagues' attempt to dump the ball in their Senate co-partisans' court. It seems that the House DAmN-ers were declaring that they've done their part and now it's time for the Senate DAmN-ers to tote that barge.

What Cruz is essentially saying is right. The Democratic-controlled Senate simply isn't going to sign off on a bill that defunds Obamacare. They'll strip that part out and send a new bill back to the House. Then, GOP leaders in the lower chamber will have to decide their next move.

But it's the subtext of Cruz's statement that irks House Republicans. He's getting the fight he asked for -- the Senate will get a bill that does exactly what he wants. Yet already, he's signaling likely defeat and seeking to shift responsibility in the debate back to House Republicans.

Cruz's push to build support in the upper chamber for defundung Obamacare through a continuing resolution has gone virtually nowhere. Only about a dozen Republican senators are in his corner while others have publicly lambasted the idea.

By agreeing to vote on a CR that defunds Obamacare, House Speaker John Boehner's message was simple: It's your turn, Senate Republicans. You take up this fight, now. Don't blame us for inaction anymore.

Whew! The GOP-ers have subtext! With "thinking" like this, it's no wonder that the DAmN-ers are always in such a state of superhuman stress and rage. Of course "thinking" like this will do that to you.

Fortunately for the Senate DAmN-ers, they have an opportunity to point out to their pipsqueak inferior-house colleagues that even as the minority party in the Senate they've been carrying the heavy load of making it impossible, or as difficult as possible, for the Obama administration to govern, by playing their anti-constitutional game of "Supermajority! Supermajority!," since the House DAmN-ers were still wetting their pants as the minority party. And nowhere have they performed more wreckingly than in their refusal to allow the president to staff the government.

It seems like longer, but it's really not that long ago that President Obama, buoyed by his decisive reelection, started acting like someone determined to actually exercise the authority of the presidency. Among other things, he finally named three candidates to fill the vacancies on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, considered the country's second-highest court, behind the U.S. Supreme Court (for which it has in fact been a frequent feeder).

In those heady days I don't remember hearing a lot of talk about the likelihood of getting those nominees confirmed. Now our Washington Post pal Al "In the Loop" Kamen reminds us that frequently in our nation's capital the real news is the opposite of what it seems.

That's one hurdle . . ..

The Senate Judiciary Committee, on a party-line 10 to 8 vote Thursday, approved the nomination of Georgetown law professor and former Justice Department lawyer Nina Pillard to be a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Her chances of confirmation by the full Senate, however, may fall in the slim-to-none range. The vote overcame, for now, strong opposition from Republicans who said Pillard held "extreme" and "activist" views. . . .

Holding "extreme" and "activist" views is just a DAmN way of saying "not screechingly criminally insane." As we'll see in a moment, the DAmN-ers will grasp at any straw to provide cover for their deeply held political ideology, which has evolved from "We Hate That Obama" in the president's first term to "If You Thought We Hated That [racially tinged obscenity deleted] Obama Before, You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" in the second term.

Pillard is the second of three Obama nominees approved by the committee for long-standing vacancies on the D.C. Circuit, often called the second most important court in the country.

Another nominee, Patricia Millett, also was a approved on a party-line 10 to 8 vote in committee, on Aug. 1, though Republicans didn’t criticize her qualifications, arguing that the court didn’t need any more judges. The third nominee, U.S. District Judge Robert Wilkins, is expected to have a committee vote in the next few weeks.

It appears likely that Senate Republicans will move to block confirmation of all three nominees, preserving the existing 4 to 4 split between Republicans and Democrats on the appeals court.

Did you get that? The District Circuit doesn't need any more judges! How inoffensive must Patricia Millett be if that's the best the DAmN-ers could come up with to justify a unified-party-line vote against her?

And of course if we play another round of our beloved party game "If the Shoe Were on the Other Foot," just imagine a Republican president sending the Senate a judicial nominee in the mold of, say, the Lying Idiot Alito, and Senate Democrats announcing unified opposition (hey, we're just imagining here) on the ground that the court in question has enough judges.

The message I get from the Senate Republicans is: "We hate America so much that we no longer feel the need to make up minimally believable lies to cover our tracks." Ya gotta love 'em.