Key Democrat Warns GOP: Lift Your Blockade On Three Key Judges Or The Nuclear Option Is Coming

BY IAN MILLHISER/Think Progress

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the senior-most member of the Senate, has a warning for his Republican colleagues — either they back off their efforts to maintain Republican control over a powerful federal court, or they could lose their ability to filibuster judicial nominees forever. Currently, most Senate Republicans plan to filibuster all three of President Obama’s nominees to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, often citing misleading statistics to claim that no more judges are needed on this, the second most powerful court in the country. If these filibusters succeed, it will maintain GOP dominance over a court that blocked environmental regulations which would prevent tens of thousands of deaths and that at one point threatened to shut down nearly all federal legal protections for unionized workers.

On Tuesday, however, Leahy warned that if these three nominees are successfully filibustered “I think that the pressure on changing the rules would be almost insurmountable.” Last July, Senate Democrats came within a hair of pulling the trigger on the so-called “nuclear opinion,” a procedural maneuver that allows the Senate’s rules to be changed with just a simple majority vote, though they backed off after Republicans stopped blocking confirmations to seven top government jobs.

Leahy’s warning to his GOP colleagues is particularly significant because more senior Democrats have historically been more reluctant to support filibuster reform than the more junior members of the Democratic caucus. Now, however, the most senior member of the caucus is threatening reform relatively early in the fight to confirm the three D.C. Circuit nominees.

Senator Catches NRA Head In Epic Flip Flop

By Igor Volsky and Annie-Rose Strasser/Think Progress

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) caught National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre in a significant contradiction during Wednesday’s hearing on preventing gun violence. Since the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut the nation’s most influential gun lobby has opposed the growing bipartisan push for universal background checks, arguing that such a policy would infringe on the Second Amendment rights of law abiding Americans. But as Leahy pointed out, the group has supported the reasonable background checks in the past.

Under current law, gun purchasers buying firearms from federally licensed dealers are subject to background checks. As a result, more than 2 million applicants have been prohibited from purchasing guns. Unfortunately, 40 percent of firearm acquisitions are from individuals who are not licensed gun dealers and do not undergo any background checks. Gun safety advocates have sought to close the loophole for years and in the 1999, the NRA backed this effort.

“We think it is reasonable to provide mandatory, instant criminal background checks for every sale at every gun show,” LaPierre said during a hearing held on May 27, 1999, in the wake of the Columbine High School shooting. “No loopholes anywhere for anyone. That means closing the Hinckley loophole so the records of those adjudicated mentally ill are in the system.”

Leahy pressed LaPierre on why the organization has since changed its mind:

LEAHY: Do you still, as you did in 1999, still support mandatory background checks at gun shows? Yes or no?

LAPIERRE: We support the national check system on dealers. We were here when one of your colleagues held the hearings in terms of who would be a dealer and who would be required to have a license. If you did it for live the good and profit, yes. If you did it for a hobby, no. [...]

LEAHY: You do not support background checks in all instances at gun shows?

LAPIERRE: We do not, because the fact is, the law right now is a failure the way it is working. You have 76,000 people that have been denied under the present law. Only 44 were prosecuted. You are letting them go. They’re walking the street.

LEAHY: Back in 1999, you said no loopholes anywhere for anyone. But now you do not support a background checks for all buyers of firearms?

LAPIERRE: The system the way it is working now is a failure. This administration is not prosecuting the people they catch. 22 states are not even putting the mental records of those adjudicated incompetent into the system. If they try to buy a gun, even if you catch them, and they try to walk away, you let them. They are criminals, homicidal maniacs, can’t mentally ill — and mentally ill. We all know that, maniacs and the mentally insane do not abide by the law.

Watch it:

While NRA leadership opposes universal background checks, its members back the change. Anational survey conducted by Johns Hopkins University found that “89 percent of all respondents, and 75 percent of those identified as NRA members, support universal background checks for gun sales. Similar surveys by Pew Research Center and Gallup have also found background checks to be by far the most popular gun control proposal in the aftermath the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.”

UPDATE

Here is a copy of the ad the NRA took out in 1999 saying, “We think it’s reasonable to provide for instant checks at gun shows just like at gun stores and pawn shops.”

UPDATE

The NRA broke its commitment to support background checks for “every sale” andlobbied for a watered down provision in 1999.

GOP Sen. claims equal rights are just too expensive

By David Edwards/Raw Story

Why shouldn’t same sex couples have equal rights? According to Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), it’s because equality is just too expensive.

“Repealing the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) would actually result in an expansion of federal benefits and spending at a time when we know that federal spending is way out of control and our entitlement programs are unsustainable,” he told the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday.

“Repealing the Defense of Marriage Act would actually increase the cost of Social Security that is already insolvent,” he added. “No one has paid into the Social Security system expecting benefits to be paid to same sex partners.”

Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) later explained that same sex couples, like everyone else, deserved the benefits of the system they had been paying into.

“If you have a same sex couple, both of whom have paid into Social Security, both of whom have fulfilled all the things required, that somehow it would be wrong if they got the same benefits as an opposite sex couple would,” he said. “Fair is fair. They paid. They should be allowed. … I think if you’re paying the taxes, you’re fulfilling the obligations, you ought to get the same benefits as anybody else.”

Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) added that a 2004 Congressional Budget Office report found that legalizing same sex marriage would actually slightly decrease the Social Security burden.

In the end, the committee voted 10-8 along party lines for the bill to repeal DOMA. It is not expected to pass the full Senate even if it does comes up for a vote.

Watch this video from the U.S. Senate, broadcast Nov. 10, 2011.