Watching the Senate Discussion of Frist's "Nuclear" Option and These Strange Judicial Nominees

While I'm going nuts juggling five very different books right now - not to mention the many distractions of my personal life (chaos!) - I find myself riveted to the Senate floor coverage on C-SPAN.

Cut aside the rhetoric on both sides of the aisle, and you see that 208 of 218 of Mr. Bush's nominees have gotten that "clear up or down vote" that Frist says the Democrats have obstructed. Think about that: 208 out of 218. When was the last time you fared so well in your proposals or desires?

The 4-7 most controversial candidates were ones that were previously rejected by the Senate as "too extreme", "too far out of the mainstream". They haven't gotten a vote yet. Mr. Bush, instead of trying to work with the Senate, simply smirked and submitted these same names again and demanded they get life-time bench appointments. We hear that behind the scenes, Karl Rove worked with Priscilla Owens, for example, to keep her from taking a post on the Texas Supreme Court to keep her available for the president's desired spot.

The more you research these candidates, the more uncomfortable you should become. These are people who - despite the right's lovely lofty rhetoric - are very scary. They are very pro-corporation and very anti-individual. They have voted to oppose very common sense issues and they have sneered at humans with disabilities, humans with justifiable concerns about what their employers demanded they do, at the individual's right to choose.

I don't see this as a Republican vs. Democrat issue. I see this as the president's insistence that he fill the courts with people who will always side with this administration, always side with corporations against their employees, always side with the right's most extreme views to the detriment of America as a whole.

Again and again today, I've heard senators who are "comfy" with Bush outright lie. One says now Atty Gen Gonzalez never opposed Priscilla Owens, for example. But that's not true. Gonzalez' opposition to her views and rulings is part of the record. Yet that's how emboldened some GOP politicians have become; they'll lie in the face of incontravertible evidence, against the best interests of the American people, and then claim that any attempt to shine light on these lies is "an act against people of faith."

Yet most of us are people of faith. The war, in fact, is not against people of faith but waged BY a very select group of people who feel that their faith is the only one that matters. They're waging it in the House and Senate, in the courts, in the press, everywhere they can.

We need to let those 7 GOP senators who are undecided or haven't signed on to the killing of the filibuster that the filibuster needs to remain; we need to be able to say no to Mr. Bush who has used and abused his power since before the Supreme Court positioned him in the White House, not allowing the 2000 vote to be counted in total.

Say NO! Say it loudly, say it proudly, say it often, and say it with the knowledge - because you've done the legwork and thinking - that No is the right response.