[Dut to some technical difficulties here at Contratimes, there has been a delay in recent posts. Apologies abound.]
©Bill Gnade 2005
I once wrote that if there are some things too good to be true, it follows that some things are too bad to be false. I'd like to amend that a little bit and say that there are also some things so dumb, they could only have been uttered by a U.S. Senator.
As you know by now, the U.S. Senate is rife with chestbeatings and podium-poundings over the possibility Senate Republicans will change Senate rules in order to stop the Democratic senators from preventing an "up or down" vote on President Bush's judicial nominees by the deployment of the filibuster. On one side of the aisle, Republicans bluster about Democrats' obstructionism; on the other, Democrats bluster about majority tyranny.
Now, I am not going to analyze the intricacies of Senate traditions and rules. Others far wiser have done such analysis. I am much more interested in a glaring contradiction, a contradiction of massive proportions, committed by Democrat Charles Schumer, from New York, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Schumer is an important player in the whole filibuster battle, for the simple reason that he is unabashedly critical of judicial nominees not on the basis of each nominee's judicial aptitude, but on each nominee's ideology. In fact, Tom Brune of Newsday reports on May 20, 2005 that "The battle royal over judicial appointments and filibusters now preoccupying the Senate can be traced back to an op-ed article published four years ago by a little-known senator from New York. ... Newly named as chairman of a Senate subcommittee on the courts, Sen. Charles Schumer wrote that his fellow Democrats could reject President George W. Bush's nominees based on ideology, not just qualifications and temperament."
It's not what a potential federal judge DOES, or whether he or she applies the law as the legislature intended; what matters is what belief-system a candidate for the judiciary holds, or so Schumer, one of the Senate frontmen on this issue, posits for our consideration.
But even this, which MUST at least border on a religious litmus test, does not concern me. What concerns me is something more insidious; something very subtle, argued by Sen. Schumer during a hearing in the judiciary committee. It is insidious in that it represents a tyranny based on manipulation of fact; it is subtle in that no media outlets or independent critics picked up on its lunacy.
It all begins with understanding the filibuster as a "protector of minority rights", with said minority NOT being blacks and latinos and blind skeet-shooters, but rather the minority party in the Senate which, at the moment, is the Democratic Party. Even George Will (a master in these matters) has written that "The filibuster is an important defense of minority rights, enabling democratic government to measure and respect not merely numbers but also intensity in public controversies. Filibusters enable intense minorities to slow the governmental juggernaut." Schumer himself has voiced this idea that the filibuster protects a minority from the tyrannical mob-mentality of the majority.
But I heard (unfortunately the transcript is not yet availiable) Schumer on C-Span's broadcast of the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing of May 12 say the following (and I promise this is an accurate summation of his remarks):
"It is worth pointing out that while each Senator's vote in the Senate is of the same value, with each state of the Union getting two votes from two senators, not every Senator's vote represents the same representational value. The fact is that my state, the one I represent, New York, has far more people in it than do many of the states represented by my Republican counterparts. Many of my distinguished Democratic colleagues come from states of far greater populations than nearly all the Republican Senators represent. And I can assure this body that my state, and those states represented by my Democratic colleagues, do not support changing the filibuster rules, nor do they support the appointment of extremist judges."
See the subtle contradiction? I hope so.
Yes, Schumer is right, each state only has two Senators. Yes, each Senator's vote is of equal legislative weight. We are all OK with that.
But none of us should be OK with the fact that his Senate colleagues, particularly his Republican ones, should have given Schumer a pass on his absurd commentary. Not even a twitch of the lip by committee chair Arlen Specter, for instance. And none of us should countenance Schumer's crazy contradiction.
Schumer has implied, rather loudly, I think, that the Democratic minority which protects itself with a filibuster, is a minority in the Senate but is really the majority of the country's citizens. Schumer is suggesting that the Senate Republicans are actually a minority group, perhaps consisting of religious fanatics bent on creating theocracy with the appointment of radical judges. Schumer and his brethren on his side of the aisle actually REPRESENT more people than do the Republicans, and thus, at the very least, the Democrats are entitled to maintaining the filibuster to protect the will of their perceived majority.
See the contradiction? For if Schumer and his party in the Senate really are the "majority", then the filibuster for the Democrats does not protect "minority" rights, it protects majority tyranny. In other words, Schumer has opined that the Republicans are a minority trying to prevent the majority from maintaining control over that minority via the filibuster. In short, the Democrats are the REAL majority, yet they MUST be allowed to filibuster for the protection of their rights.
What, one wonders, is Schumer's suggestion that the "minority" Republicans do to protect their rights from Schumer's tyranny? How about changing the rules so that filibusters can't be deployed to prevent cloture or an "up and down" vote? How about debating and voting on the merits and performance of each judicial nominee? How about letting a simple majority say "yea" or "nay" to President Bush's appointments?
Of course, Schumer is as ironic as he is contradictory. Let me conclude with this statement of his made during his radio address on Saturday, May 14:
"Americans are a mainstream people, and we are a people of faith. Most of us believe deeply in God, but we also believe deeply in the right of debate and compromise."
Where, Mr. Schumer, is the debate? For you and your party have stopped it, repeatedly. And do you not know that one compromise inherent to all democracies is to let people vote, and to make rule changes? That's what makes democracy so vital, so strong, so elastic.
Shame on the Republican Senators for not at least pointing out that Mr. Schumer's remarks about "representation" should have been articulated in the House of Representatives, where such remarks make a semblance of sense. And shame on Schumer for ever articulating such a heinous, manipulative idea.
If Schumer believes his own remarks, then he is serving in the wrong chamber, and maybe even in the wrong country.
Contratimes
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