I thought the Republicans said that the filibuster had never been used before to block a Supreme Court nominee, or indeed even a federal judge. Therefore there were justified in threatening to remove the filibuster when democrats made the “unprecedented” move of using it to block Bush’s federal judicial nominees. Well I’m re-reading Closed Chambers: The Rise, Fall, and Future of the Modern Supreme Court, the interesting and well-written (if mainstream) book by Edward Lazarus, one of Justice Blackmun’s former clerks (sometimes we neo-confederate types read stuff other than defenses of slavery). On p. 100, he notes, in 1968, Chief … Continue reading The Filibuster