The Republican filibuster, it's different

An assembly of familiar right-wing nuts and kooks are formally calling on Republican senators to filibuster the appointment of Second Circuit judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Notable among them are the odious radio screamer Mark Levin, Brent Bozell, a media "watchdog" who makes Joe the Plumber's plumbing get all tumescent, and the typical assortment of self-appointed "Family Values" spokesreverends and concern trolls.

In other words, a like collection of dissembling hysterics to those who energetically opposed Senate filibusters of judicial nominees when there was a different president in the White House.

But there's neither cognitive dissonance nor hypocrisy in evidence, claim the concerned citizens, on account of those were Democratic filibusters and this would be a Traditional filibuster, which is the more truly Righteous and Correct kind. They further blather:

The record is similarly clear as to the consequences of confirming Supreme Court nominees with no judicial record or judicial philosophy, which is what prompted the popular rejection of the Miers nomination.

Sonia Sotomayor obviously doesn't fit within the former category, having been a federal judge for nearly 17 years (the current Chief Justice, John Roberts, has been one for exactly six years today).

Gary Bauer never made a squeak when Clarence Thomas insisted at his own confirmation hearings that he'd never thought much about Roe v. Wade, arguably the most contentious Supreme Court decision of the century, despite its being issued while he was in law school.

Throughout those hearings, Thomas attempted to flee — "stripped down like a runner," as he put it — from every prior statement he'd ever made that indicated any sort of "judicial philosophy" at all.

And Harriet Miers wasn't popularly rejected; she withdrew from Senate consideration following the ungodly clamor created by a band of "religious conservatives," the very people who've signed this current petition.

Everybody else just sat back and watched with amusement.

In fact, Americans have been awakened to their own stewardship of the federal courts. Exit polls in the last election show that as many as three quarters of voters consider the Supreme Court nomination process a "significant" factor in their vote.

The voters who awarded Obama nearly 70% of the Electoral College? The voters who removed seven of 33 Senate seats from Republican control and handed them to the Democrats? Those voters?

Your concerns are noted, Faction.

Via The Caucus — NYT.

eta: The next logical step was to have us a critter.