Democrats are wrong on the filibuster

Alright, this doesn't have much to do with Gil, but it's pretty much something floating around the Democrat party that's getting on my nerves.

Simply put, many liberal Democrats simply do not understand the filibuster. Many of them are on boards saying "Republicans lied" about this Senate precedent of blocking a judicial nominee with a partisan Senate filibuster. Many of them point to this case with Richard Paez. However, you can see here that this vote "On the Cloture Motion (Cloture Motion RE: Nom. of Richard Paez to be U.S. Circuit Judge ) succeeded on March 8, 2000, he was confirmed by the Senate March 9, 2000. A successful cloture vote CANNOT be a filibuster.

Many also get confused because judicial nominees were blocked by Senate Committees (which, by the way, is called the blue slip policy and was established by Democrats Kennedy and Biden). What does this have to do with a precedent on a vote that reached the Senate floor? Absolutely NOTHING! Paez is not a precedent for this scenario!

Democrats have been using the partisan senate filibuster to block judicial nominees starting with Miguel Estrada. I've been asking around from Democrats for a Senate Republican filibuster used to block judicial nominees on the Senate floor. So far, no dice.

Hmmmm... who lied?

Part of the problem may be that Democrats simply do not understand the filibuster and cloture. Here is a good course in both straight from the U.S. Senate. In it, they explain that a vote against cloture does not necessarily mean that there is a vote in favor of a filibuster. For some more good links on this topic, visit the Original Smart Retorts Online Archive, linked on the side.