After two all-night sessions to "debate" nominations that they know are going to be approved, but that they insist on fully"debating," Senate Republicans are upset. Today's New York Times has an article about just how upset the poor dears are with those mean Democrats.
“I think it resembles fourth graders playing in a sandbox, and I’ll give the majority leader, Harry Reid, 99 percent of the responsibility for it,” Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee and usually one of the more reserved members, said Thursday.“He’s going to have ‘The End of the Senate’ written on his tombstone,” Mr. Alexander complained.
Oh yes, Lamar, the Senate worked SO much better when the Republican minority could block absolutely everything by simply getting 41 Senators to say "No." Republicans complained that instead of tackling the many substantive issues that the Senate should resolve before the end of the year — whether to impose sanctions on Iran, passing the annual defense authorization bill and settling a long-running dispute over federal subsidies to farmers and food stamps — lawmakers were wasting their time on midlevel nominations. Hey, assholes, if you don't want to waste time debating midlevel nominations that you know are going to be approved, I've got a suggestion for you: DON'T INSIST ON DEBATING THEM! Stop your temper tantrums that are worthy of a 2 year old going through a bad case of the "terrible twos" and that problem will be instantly solved.Harry Reid has gotten a lot of criticism here, but let's give him some credit for finally rounding up the votes to put a stop to Republicans' absolute power to block every nomination. Here's what has happened within the last day or so as a result:
The Democratic push was producing results as the Senate confirmed Cornelia T. L. Pillard, one of the nominees at the heart of the fight with Republicans over the filibuster, to the country’s most powerful appeals court, the District of Columbia Circuit, shortly after 1 a.m. on Thursday by a 51-to-44 vote.As the day wore on, several other nominees were confirmed as well: Chai Feldblum to serve as a commissioner on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; Elizabeth Wolford to Federal District Court for the Western District of New York; and Landya B. McCafferty to the Federal District Court for the District of New Hampshire, among others.
Update below the orange squiggle.