Vote in independants who want to create a system where the politicians don't have enough power to be corrupted in the first place.
From today's WSJ: The Pickering Precedent President Bush's recess appointment of Charles Pickering Sr. to the federal appeals bench last Friday is a welcome move, not least because it shows he's willing to carry the fight over judicial nominees from here to November. Mr. Pickering will now get the honor of serving a year on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and at 66 years old might well make this his career coda. The Mississippi judge was one of Mr. Bush's first nominees, in May 2001, and has always had confirmation support from a bipartisan majority of Senators. But he has been denied a floor vote by a minority filibuster orchestrated by Northeastern liberals Ted Kennedy, Hillary Rodham Clinton and her junior New York partner Chuck Schumer. Mr. Bush has every right, even an obligation, to use his recess power to counter this unprecedented abuse of the Senate's advice and consent power. A filibuster has never before in U.S. history been used to defeat an appellate-court nominee, but Democrats have used it against six of Mr. Bush's choices. All of them have enough bipartisan support to be confirmed if they could only get a full Senate vote. One of the more despicable elements of the anti-Pickering smear has been the use of the race card, even though the judge has the support of the African-Americans who know him best, including the Mississippi chapter of the NAACP. Mr. Pickering sent his children to the newly integrated public schools in that state in the 1960s, and he helped the FBI in prosecutions of the KKK, testifying against the imperial wizard in 1967 at some personal risk. But these facts are irrelevant to liberals who are panicked after their recent election defeats and are clinging to their last lever of national power through the appointed judiciary. They're hoping the public won't notice or care much about this power play, which means that Mr. Bush and Republicans will have to keep the issue front and center. Five Southern Senate seats are open this year, and voters in those states in particular deserve to know how much the bicoastal Democratic liberals despise their values.
Sorry, T_J, no dice. When the Reps were in power with Clinton as the President, they didn't have to use the filibuster because they could just tie the nomination up in committee. Once again the right is trying to bash the left for using absolutely legal tactics to make sure that no far right wing judicial activists (like Pickering) get put on the bench. I know that for you and your ilk, marching in lock step to the drums of Rove and Company is just SOP, but Pickering (and the other 5 who are being filibustered) do not deserve to be on the bench because of their fanatical views. When you post such slanted garbage, it only proves the fact that you are nothing more than a: BUSH BOBBLE HEAD
Because we have seen how the corrupting influences work in our system. I would get the money out of politics with ENTIRELY publicly funded elections, open up the process with community based primaries and a nomination process that allows for more than two points of view, and I might even support term limits. The point is that if we sit down and think about it, we can come up with a process within our system that lessens the power our politicians have and thus reduces the corrupting influence of politics.
i'm very skeptical...because the inclination towards greed and power is so innate, it seems. but i think it's awesome you have hope it could be changed.
Not just hope, I have a vision. I know it could be changed for the better, just not as long as we (the people who this country is supposed to serve) continue to listen to the lies from the right and the distortions from the left.
