It's that time again. The Senate is back from it's loooong summer vacation, and the old farts' fancies turn to thoughts of obstruction. Actually, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) probably spent the last five weeks cooking up ways to try to derail President Obama's nominees to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. What he came up with was, well,
bizarre.
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) tried to get D.C. Circuit court nominee Robert Wilkins to criticize statements made by another of President Barack Obama's D.C. Circuit nominees, Nina Pillard, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday. It didn't work, though.
There was an awkward exchange as Grassley, the ranking Republican on the committee, read aloud passages from a 2007 article that Pillard wrote about abortion and access to contraception. Grassley never said what he was reading from or who made those statements. He simply asked Wilkins to say whether he agreed or disagreed with a series of "assertions regarding constitutional law," in order to get a sense of his "judicial philosophy."
According to a Senate Democratic aide in attendance at the hearing, the exchange was "super weird," but Wilkins "handled it perfectly." From the report, he handled it as well as anyone could, trying to remain respectful of the senator questioning him while being utterly baffled as to where exactly these completely out-of-context quotes were coming from.
That might have been the least of it for Wilkins, though, from Grassley who once again harped on his supposed rationale for keeping President Obama from making any judicial appointments to this court: The court has too many seats and the Senate shouldn't approve anyone. He shared this with the nominee.
"Just so that you know, this is a debate that is beyond you as an individual, although it could impact you," Grassley said. "We'll leave that for another day."
Which means along with budget fights and debt ceiling fights, there'll be a filibuster fight this fall. Which means Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Democrats need to be ready to take it on.
Tell your Democratic senators to keep filibuster reform moving, and to bring back the talking filibuster.