Banana Republic—Forget John Kerry; it’s House Republicans who are perfecting the art of the flip-flop—especially when it comes to holding open crucial floor votes for indefinite periods so they can twist arms and get their wavering soldiers to switch votes. The Medicare reform vote in 2003 lasted three hours in the dead of night, instead […]

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Meet Madam Justice—Does Bush know something his conservative base doesn’t about Harriet Miers? He must, considering the outcry that has accompanied his pick to replace outgoing Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Following the announcement, Bush’s choice was met with a firestorm of disapproval, this time from his supporters. They wanted another Scalia or Thomas. […]

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Filibusters Are Busted—In our June 1 FYI we said they weren’t. But then, under a bipartisan agreement, Senate Democrats voluntarily backed down on the decision to filibuster the confirmation of several appellate court judges. The Senate confirmed the judgeships of two conservative women, Janice Rogers Brown, an African-American Justice on the California Supreme Court, and Priscilla R. Owen of […]

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Trumping the Right Wing—Tom “The Hammer” DeLay, the Republican majority leader in the House of Representatives, was already in trouble when he toiled to engineer the controversial congressional intervention into the Terri Schiavo drama. It was an example of “justice DeLayed is justice denied.” Among other discoveries following DeLay’s drive to push Congress to do […]

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Out of Town—But not soon enough? Just when we were exclaiming “at last!” as the 109th Congress was fleeing the Capitol for a two-week Easter recess, some hard-line Republican conservatives, led by Representative Tom Delay of Texas, maneuvered themselves into the life-or-death case of Terri Schiavo. She is the 41-year-old Florida woman now in her […]

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