Liberals Do What They Do Best

People for the American Way Disseminates False Statements on Filibusters

The Judicial Confirmation Network says lying is not "the American way"

The following statement from Wendy E. Long, Counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network, concerns a recent statement released by People for the American Way on the use of the Senate filibuster against judicial nominees.

"Once again, the extreme liberal organization People for the American Way is circulating false information. In its desperate campaign to rationalize the use of unprecedented filibusters to permanently block President Bush's judicial nominees, PFAW has produced a list of presidential nominees that it claims were subjected to Senate filibusters before the current Bush administration. (http://media.pfaw.org/filibusters.pdf)

"This PFAW list of 34 names, entitled 'Filibusters of Nominations', blatantly misstates the truth. There is not one single judge on the list that was blocked by filibuster. Of the 34 nominations listed by PFAW, only 3 were not confirmed by the Senate. For example, the list of purportedly filibustered nominees includes Justices William H. Rehnquist and Stephen G. Breyer, and Judges Marsha L. Berzon and Richard A. Paez. Obviously, these jurists were not blocked from the bench by a filibuster: the first two currently sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, and the next two currently sit on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

"Every judicial nominee on the PFAW list was confirmed by the Senate, with the exception of Justice Abe Fortas, who was nominated by President Lyndon Johnson in 1968, and after only four days of debate on the Senate floor, received such strong opposition from Democrats and Republicans alike due to allegations of ethical improprieties that President Johnson withdrew the nomination. Even the Fortas nomination was not killed by filibuster.

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