Topic: Newsmax
A Dec. 15 Newsmax article by Tim Collie examining whether Senate Republicans will "filibuster on controversial [judicial] nominees" from Barack Obama fails to note that Republicans leaning toward filibustering opposed the practice when Democrats used the strategy for a few of President Bush's nominees.
Collie writes:
Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., has been more blunt, promising to “lead a filibuster if the nominee is the kind of radical leftist who decides cases based on empathy rather than the Constitution or the law. And if that’s what he intends to do, then I’ll try to get my colleagues to join in that as well,” Kyle said in a speech to the Federalist Society in November.
But as Right Wing Watch notes, in 2005 Kyl supported the "nuclear option," which would have wiped out the right to filibuster judicial nominees.
Collie also cites statements made by Curt Levey, an attorney executive director of the conservative Committee for Justice, in a Washington Post article. But as Media Matters notes, Levey also told the Post (though Collie doesn't quote it) that Republican senators should "play hardball" on Obama's judicial nominees. Nowhere does Collie mention that the CFJ previously called filibusters by a minority of senators to block judicial nominations "unconstitutional."
