"LIES, TRUTH, WHATEVER"

The Senate is in the midst of a thirty-hour debate, the Republicans discussing the unconscionable filibustering of judicial nominees and the Democrats discussing anything but that. I knew the Old Media would gear up for this on the editorial pages, and sure enough, they did. But here’s an even BIGGER surprise – I didn’t got to the Font!

The Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune has a perfect encapsulation of the liberal argument. Check out the lead paragraph:

“Most U.S. senators talk too much as it is. The last thing they should want is a chance to reinforce their reputations as windbags. Yet even as you read this, Senate Republicans are staging a 30-hour gabfest to make a silly point. What are they bleating about? The simple fact that, out of the scores of judicial nominees President Bush has submitted for Senate confirmation, Democrats have rejected four.”

Lie number one – the Democrats have not rejected four. They have refused Republican and Democrats (and let’s not forget Mr. Independent, Jim Jeffords) the CHANCE to reject or approve four. That’s what this whole thirty-hour debate about!! So the whole editorial starts out with a huge lie!!

The editorial then goes into the Democrat talking points of “168 have been approved, only 4 have been blocked, so what’s the big deal?” Well, Senator Bennett this morning stood up and gave a great analogy for that. He said it’s like saying, “We only hung four without a trial, we let 168 go before a jury, what’s the big deal?” I think that quite appropriate; the Democrats are convicting these four (refusing them their judgeships) without a trial (an up or down vote in the Senate).

The Tribune then picks up another talking point:

“That Democrats have objected to four nominees is hardly worth mentioning when you consider what the Republicans did during the Clinton years: They refused to approve 60 judicial candidates -- often without citing any reason at all.”

I’ll let our friends from the Committee of Justice handle this:

“Here is what happened to the 56 Clinton nominees that did not get confirmed those 8 years. Three were left at the end of the 103rd Congress, when the Democrats were in control, so those 3 cannot count against the Republicans. That leaves 53. Nine were nominated too late in a Congress for the Committee to feasibly act on them or were lacking paperwork. That leaves 44. Seventeen of those lacked home-state support, which often resulted from the Clinton White House s failure to consult home-state senators. There was no way to confirm those nominations without completely ignoring the senatorial courtesy generally afforded to home state-senators in the nominations process. That leaves 27. One nominee was defeated on the Senate floor, which leaves 26 remaining nominees. Of those, a number had issues in their backgrounds that made them impeachable. Out of decent regard for their personal and professional reputations, those reasons were never disclosed publicly, though it is worth noting that, in a number of cases, the White House privately agreed with the decision not to move forward on them.

Bottom line: in all 6 years that Chairman Hatch chaired the Judiciary Committee while President Clinton was in office, there were fewer than 26 nominations left in Committee.

Compare this treatment to that accorded George H.W. Bush's nominees, when Democrats were in the majority and controlled the Judiciary Committee. Then, the Democrats failed to confirm 58 nominees over the course of only 4 years.”

I won’t bother going into the rest of the editorial, it’s the same lies we’ve been hearing about the four judges being denied their rights.

I think this editorial is a perfect representation of all the editorials that will be out there today – it starts with a lie and continues with lying through the whole thing, hoping that the common American still believes the drivel he gets from Old Media.