"Congressional historians said Mr. Boehner's move was unprecedented." A month before Senate Republicans blocked Barack Obama’s popular jobs bill, that’s how the New York Times described Speaker John Boehner's refusal to grant the President's request for a September 7 address to joint session of Congress to present the American Jobs Act. As it turns out, "unprecedented" is apt description for almost every boulder in the stone wall of Republican obstructionism Barack Obama has faced from the moment he took the oath of office. From the GOP's record-setting use of the filibuster and its united front against Obama's legislative agenda to blocking judicial nominees and its admitted hostage-taking of the U.S. debt ceiling, the Republican Party has broken new ground in its perpetual quest to ensure that Barack Obama will be a one-term president.

Even before Barack Obama took the oath office, Republicans leaders, conservative think-tanks and right-wing pundits were calling for total obstruction of the new president's agenda. Bill Kristol, who helped block Bill Clinton's health care reform attempt in 1993, called for history to repeat on the Obama stimulus - and everything else. Pointing with pride to the Clinton economic program which received exactly zero GOP votes in either House, Kristol in January 2009 advised:

"That it made, that it made it so much easier to then defeat his health care initiative. So, it's very important for Republicans who think they're going to have to fight later on health care, fight later on maybe on some of the bank bailout legislation, fight later on on all kinds of issues."

And so, as the chart above reveals, it came to pass.

Time after time, President Obama could count the votes he received from Congressional Republicans on the fingers (usually the middle one) of one hand. The expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) to four million more American kids earned the backing of a whopping eight GOP Senators. (One of them, Arlen Specter, later became a Democrat.) Badly needed Wall Street reform eventually overcame GOP filibusters to pass with the support of just three Republicans in the House and Senate, respectively. Last summer, it took 50 days for President Obama to get past Republican filibusters of extended unemployment benefits and the Small Business Jobs Act. As for the DISCLOSE Act, legislation designed to limit the torrent of secret campaign cash unleashed by the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, in September Republican Senators prevented it from ever coming to a vote.

The one-way street that is bipartisanship in Washington was most clearly on display during each party's attempts to pass tax cuts and economic stimulus. While some turncoat Democrats (like debt super committee member Max Baucus) helped Reagan and Bush sell their supply-side snake oil, Republicans were determined to torpedo new Democratic presidents:

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As Senate Republicans added blocking aid to small business to their record-setting obstructionism, Democrats this week failed to secure the needed votes for reform of the filibuster rule. But largely overlooked in the debate over the filibuster is the Republicans' unprecedented obstructionism when it comes to the confirmation of President Obama's judicial nominees. As it turns out, while the GOP in the 111th Congress has turned to the filibuster at more than double the previous Democratic rates, Barack Obama's nominees to the federal bench are half as likely to be confirmed.

That's the jaw-dropping conclusion of a recent study by the study by the Center for American Progress. Thanks to the Republicans' historic use of Filibusters, anonymous holds, and other obstructionist tactics, President Obama's confirmation rate is "falling off a cliff." The CAP assessment of data from the Congressional Research Service, the Justice Department and the Senate Judiciary Committee found that:

Such tactics are completely unprecedented, and so are their results. Fewer than 43 percent of President Obama's judicial nominees have so far been confirmed, while past presidents have enjoyed confirmation rates as high as 93 percent. And President Obama's nominees have been confirmed at a much slower rate than those of his predecessor--nearly 87 percent of President George W. Bush's judicial nominees were confirmed.

To be sure, the Republicans' successful rearguard action is helping to preserve conservative dominance of the federal judiciary. But with its sluggish pace of nominations, the Obama administration isn't helping itself.

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I would very much like to school Ben Nelson on what his responsibility is with regard to Supreme Court nominations. Whether he likes it or not, Elena Kagan has no disqualifying factor that should cause him to oppose her. But in Upside-Down Contrarian SenatorLand, Senator Nelson is doing exactly that. From his official statement:

July 30, 2010 – Today, Nebraska’s Senator Ben Nelson issued this statement on the president’s nomination of Elena Kagan for the U.S. Supreme Court to fill the seat of retired Justice John Paul Stevens:

“As a member of the bipartisan ‘Gang of 14,’ I will follow our agreement that judicial nominees should be filibustered only under extraordinary circumstances. If a cloture vote is held on the nomination of Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court, I am prepared to vote for cloture and oppose a filibuster because, in my view, this nominee deserves an up or down vote in the Senate.

“However, I have heard concerns from Nebraskans regarding Ms. Kagan, and her lack of a judicial record makes it difficult for me to discount the concerns raised by Nebraskans, or to reach a level of comfort that these concerns are unfounded. Therefore, I will not vote to confirm Ms. Kagan’s nomination.”

Supreme Court nominations are not a question of "Nebraskans' concerns". They are not a popularity contest. This is why, by the way, Alito and Roberts slithered onto the court. Despite their politics, they had nothing in their history to disqualify them.

As far as judicial experience goes, once again Nelson labors under the false impression that a Supreme Court Justice must be disgorged from our Federal Court system -- an impression which is false, harmful, and gave us Alito and Roberts.

It's pretty pathetic when Arlen Specter, Republican-turned-Democrat, has a stronger record of supporting judicial nominees than Ben Nelson. Or unemployment insurance extensions. Or just about any other initiative that isn't Republican.

And hey, Nebraska? I don't really give two whits about your 'concerns'. You and your conservative pals gave us ... Roberts and Alito.

I have high hopes for Sen. Al Franken, who never stops fighting for the things he believes in. How refreshing that a freshman Senator refuses to shut up and sit down, instead putting himself in the forefront of progressive fights:

Republican senators and conservative jurists found themselves on the defensive after Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) blasted "conservative activism" on federal courts.

Franken, in a major speech Thursday evening before the American Constitution Society, sought to set the stage for a summer confirmation battle in the Senate over President Barack Obama's pick, Elena Kagan, to join the Supreme Court.

The first-term senator launched a full-throated attack on originalism, the judicial philosophy often upheld by conservatives as an example for model nominees for the federal courts.

"Originalism isn’t a pillar of our constitutional history. It’s a talking point," Franken said, adding a jab at Chief Justice John Roberts for his famous comparison between judges and baseball umpires during Roberts's confirmation hearings.

"How ridiculous," Franken said. "Judges are nothing like umpires."

The Senate is set to take up the Kagan nomination in the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which Franken serves, later this month.

With the battle over Kagan and other judicial nominees having stalled in the Senate, Franken also took a moment to castigate GOP filibusters of Obama's court picks.

"The Republican obstruction that is standing between you and the work you’ve agreed to do for your country is unacceptable. And we will continue to fight it," Franken said, apologizing to Goodwin Liu and Dawn Johnsen, the president's picks for a circuit court spot and director of the Office of Legal Counsel, respectively, who were both in the audience.

Credit where credit is due - this is a solid liberal appointment and a noted constitutional scholar -- things that paint a target on his back to the anti-intellectual right wing. Liu isn't a "safe" choice, so I have to assume Obama's prepared to go to the mat for him, since the usual suspects are already smearing him:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Thirteen months into his presidency, Barack Obama finally gave liberal supporters the kind of judicial nominee they had sought and conservatives feared.

Goodwin Liu, 39, is an unabashed liberal legal scholar who, if confirmed, could become a force on the federal appeals court for decades. There's talk that in time, the Rhodes Scholar, former high court clerk and current assistant dean and law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, could be the first person of Asian descent chosen for the Supreme Court.

"I can easily imagine him" as a high court nominee, said Erwin Chemerinsky, a Liu supporter and dean of the law school at the University of California, Irvine.

Obama's choice of Liu for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco drew quick and vociferous criticism from conservatives. Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, described Liu as "far outside the mainstream of American jurisprudence."

For the first time, Obama seemed to be taking a page from the playbook of recent Republican presidents who nominated conservatives in their 30s and 40s with the expectation they would have enduring influence in setting policy on the federal bench.

Madeleine Begun Kane

• Senator Frist is poised to exercise the “nuclear option,” altering filibuster rules and creating a constitutional crisis over extremist right-wing judicial nomineesJanice Rogers Brown and Priscilla Owen. So I thought it was time for some Injudicious Limericks:
  Ode To Janice Brown 

  A Bush nominee who's named Jan
  Is quite clearly no precedent fan.
  Her dissents so extreme
  Tout the Fed'ralist theme,
  And she'd cheerfully civil rights ban.

  Ode To Priscilla Owen 

  George Dub picked Judge Owen, Priscilla,
  Who of reason does lack a scintilla.
  Owen's views are extreme.
  She's a "pro-lifer's" dream,
  And she's also a worker rights killah.

",0]);D(["ce"]);D(["ms","3c15"]);//--> Janice Rogers Brown and Priscilla Owen. So I thought it was time for some Injudicious Limericks:
Ode To Janice Brown

A Bush nominee who's named Jan
Is quite clearly no precedent fan.
Her dissents so extreme
Tout the Fed'ralist theme,
And she'd cheerfully civil rights ban.

Ode To Priscilla Owen

George Dub picked Judge Owen, Priscilla,
Who of reason does lack a scintilla.
Owen's views are extreme.
She's a "pro-lifer's" dream,
And she's also a worker rights killah.

...So, like, Senator Rick Santorum, representing the batshit insane people of Pennsylvania, he of the famous "fags-and-dog-fuckers-are-the-same" line (or words to that effect), took to the Senate floor yesterday, and vomited out that Democrats using the filibuster rule to block extreme judicial nominees is "the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 saying, 'I'm in Paris. How dare you invade me. How dare you bomb my city? It's mine.'" Left Blogsylvania naturally exploded, and why not, since Santorum had so recently condemned Robert Byrd for simply invoking policies of Hitler in a debate over the filibuster rules in March...read on

Read the whole piece if you can. Santorum should know better that to get the Rude Pundit annoyed.

via Kos: The battle is engaged.

Meanwhile, AMERICABlog catches chickenshit DeLay backing off the keynote address of an anti-judges conference.

via Think Progress

The suggestion that judicial nominees are being opposed because they believe in God is ridiculous. But that didn’t stop Trent Lott from repeating the claim on ABC’s This Week:

Download | play -WMP

Download | play -QT

LOTT: [W]hat has made people uncomfortable is that people that have strong feelings about their faith, regardless of the denomination or background of that particular religious group, if they feel strongly and live and support the positions that reflect their faith, then you’re disqualified.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But that’s the difference…

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: ….people are motivated by opposing this faith. You’d agree with that.

LOTT: I do.

Lott also tried to change the name of the filibuster vote from the "nuclear option" to the "constitutional option"

GOP Moderates Wary of Filibuster Curb

The Senate Republican leader's threat to outlaw filibusters of judicial nominees is running into significant resistance from his party's moderates, who may be poised to quash the GOP's most potent and controversial option for dealing with Democratic opposition to conservative judges....read on