Justice Abe Fortas Would Have Lost, Anyway
Republicans filibustered a 1968 Supreme Court nominee because they needed the practice, not because they had no other way to defeat a popular judge.
Yeah, that's the ticket!
The current fight over President Bush's judicial nominees is a real knock-down, drag-out spectacle, and some have blamed conservatives for stretching the truth to get their point across. But FOX News knows it's more a matter of spirited debate, and less an issue of intentional falsehoods.
For example, when you listen to this recording (70kB mp3) of Bill Frist lying, you realize it sounds a lot like he thought he was telling the truth.
It's not as if Frist really knew
what he was talking about. Had he ever moved to filibuster a Democratic president's judicial nominee, he'd have known better. But he's no more a liar than a hypocrite. Bill Frist is merely human.
So human, in fact, he completely forgot filibustering Richard Paez on March 8, 2000. "Must've been all that evangelicizing I've been doing lately," laughed the quirky quack. "Sorry 'bout that."
To make matters worse, a pesky old historical detail about a Lyndon B. Johnson nominee named Abe Fortas popped out of the woodwork. It seems a conservative Senate successfully filibustered Fortas in 1968.
Enter Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. Masterful at telling only the truth that needs to be told, these guys put two and two together, and came up with one: Abe Fortas' support in 1968 Senate was not restricted to one party or the other; his was an ideological nomination. Grunted Cheney upon realizing this minor detail, "I smell a loophole."
"We can always refer to some 'majority support' without distinguishing between party lines and ideological ones," he snorted. "We can turn a lie into a kinda-sorta-white-lie. And the truth can go fuck itself."
Listen to how the Vice President keenly alters the message (43 kB mp3) - "till recently not once in the history of the United States had a group of senators ever used the filibuster to block a judicial nominee having majority support in the Senate."
Wow! Eloquent, glib, and in a roundabout way, not entirely untrue!
 'Lefty' and 'Jr.' go on record. |
"We're really not that big," says Lefty, the bigger of the president's gonads. "Most people think we're larger than normal because of that horrid day two years ago aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln." Junior, Bush's other testicle, nodded in agreement. "That dumbass kept us in his g-strap for two hours."
Not that they see much action. "We haven't been active since the days of coke binges and whores," sighed Lefty, "but that doesn't give him the right to wrench us about like that."
Pilots agree. "If he'd actually seen some flying time in his day, he'd know to undo his g-strap after landing," said Captain Rob Castle of the U.S. Navy. The g-strap is a dual-banded harness used to hold a man's testicles outward and upward during flight, so that his legs don't squeeze them during high-g maneuvers. If a pilot keeps the strap in place while not in the sitting position, it pulls his scrotum forward, creating the impression he's "blessed."
"Even enlisted men know about that trick," laughed Castle.
