Dobson: Leahy's Rhetoric a 'Smokescreen' -- Just End the Filibuster
by Jody Brown and Fred Jackson
May 19, 2005
(AgapePress) - The furor over Senate Democrats' continued filibustering of judicial nominees is turning into a war of words between a liberal Democratic senator and a respected pro-family leader.Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the panel of lawmakers that decides whether a president's judicial nominees are sent to the full Senate for confirmation. Along with fellow liberals in the Senate, Leahy has continued to filibuster confirmation votes on several of President Bush's conservative nominees -- one for more than four years. Focus on the Family's Dr. James Dobson and other Christian leaders charge that Leahy and other Democrats have blocked such votes to keep devout Catholics and other Christians off the federal bench.
During debate in the Senate on Wednesday (May 18), Leahy said he resents being accused of filibustering people of faith -- and particularly the criticism leveled by Dobson. "Dr. Dobson of Focus on the Family a while back said of me, 'I don't know if he hates God -- but he hates God's people,'" the senator stated. "You know, I wonder every Sunday when I'm at mass, 'What planet is this person from?'"
The Vermont lawmaker said he and other Democrats are the targets of "virulent religious McCarthyism" -- and that such attacks are "contemptible." He added that Christian conservatives who are pushing for an end to the filibusters are engaging in a "dangerous and corrosive game of religious McCarthyism in which anyone daring to oppose one of this president's judicial nominees is being branded as being 'anti-Christian' or 'anti-Catholic' or against people of faith."
According to Dobson, Leahy's verbal attack is a sign that liberals in the Senate are "ratcheting up their rhetoric" in an effort to mask the real issue. And as for the senator's personal criticism, Dobson says he was merely "pointing out the anti-religious bias evident in the public statements and actions of some Democratic senators."
"This kind of bluster is what is contemptible," Dobson says in a statement. "It is just another attempt to obscure the real issue here -- that every judicial nominee with clear majority support is entitled to an up-or-down vote."
Democratic leaders like Leahy, says Dobson, are reluctant to admit that is the real issue because it would "jeopardize their efforts to hang on to the last bastion of liberal power: the courts."
He says the Democrats' "smokescreens" must be seen through and the filibuster brought to an end.
The L.A. Times?
One of the most liberal newspapers in the U.S. has issued an editorial calling on the Senate to put an end to filibusters forever. The Los Angles Times calls the filibuster an "arcane ... tactic that empowers a minority of ... senators to block a vote [which] goes above and beyond those checks on majority power legitimately written into the Constitution."
The liberal newspaper also points out that Democratic senators themselves decried the filibuster not long ago when they were in the majority and President Clinton's judicial nominees were being blocked.
In short, the newspaper commends Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's plan, which would stop filibusters of judicial nominees. The paper says if that happens, it will be a "great triumph for the American people." A compromise by "centrists" -- which according to reports is going on behind the scenes -- would deny Americans a "worthwhile victory," says the Times.
