The flier for the Bill Frist endorsed telethon reads: “The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people of faith.”

Speaking of racial bias…

One of the nominees the filibuster could be used against is Terrence Boyle, opposed by nearly every conceivable minority group for his abominable record on civil rights. During the redistricting of North Carolina in the 1990s, the state created a congressional district to reflect the strong African-American population of the area. Boyle tried to block the district’s creation and declared it unconstitutional, a decision reversed twice by the Supreme Court and called “clearly erroneous” by Justice Clarence Thomas. Judge Boyle also has a record of siding with employers in cases of workplace discrimination.

In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the National Bar Association questioned Boyle’s “professional competence,” “judicial temperament,” “commitment to equal justice under the law” and “cultural sensitivity.”

Americans are barraged with news of a massive annual federal deficit of over $400 billion, declining incomes for the middle-class and rising gas prices, all of which are squeezing the incomes of middle-class Americans. What is Congress’s response to these pressing problems? Passing tax cuts for the children of billionaires through full repeal of the estate tax.

Let’s be clear about what happened this week in Washington. The House of Representatives passed full and permanent repeal of the estate tax despite the fact that our debt is now over $7.7 trillion. Despite the fact that full repeal will cost $290 billion in the next decade and $2 trillion over the next 20 years. Despite the fact that this same Congress is likely to make billions of dollars of cuts to health care for those in need through cuts to Medicaid, cuts to education, and cuts to veteran programs. Despite the fact that keeping the estate tax for estates worth over $3.5 million would make up a quarter to half of the Social Security solvency gap. That, by the way, is well below where the estate tax stood when President Bush took office and would exempt more than 99 percent of estates from the tax.

But this debate isn’t just about numbers and statistics. It’s also about whether we maintain our commitment to the fundamental American ideal of a meritocracy — that everyone in America should have an equal opportunity to get ahead. That just because of accidents of birth, one group of Americans shouldn’t have unrivaled power. That in America, we should celebrate individual achievement and the ability of individuals to make it on their own. Read more

When Rep. Chris Shays (R-CT) called for the resignation of Rep. Tom DeLay, conservatives turned on Shays as if he were the one going around verbally attacking federal judges and embroiled in ethics scandals. Shays’s congressional colleague Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) claimed he was “totally out of touch” with mainstream conservatives and “disloyal to the party and to people as individuals.” That personal attack wasn’t enough for Rohrabacher who went on to call Shays a “jerk” who gained his notoriety off of his disloyalty. Rush Limbaugh addressed his comments to Shays himself and declared, “It’s going to take a lot more than you, Chris Shays, to get rid of someone who’s decent and good and moral and upstanding and a fighter, and that’s Tom DeLay.”

Now, Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) has postured that if Tom DeLay “chose to resign as majority leader until these matters are resolved, that’s probably not the worst idea.” This is the same congressman who served as the keynote speaker at the kickoff event for the Minuteman Project, calling the group “heroes.” Well, you really have to wonder how DeLay feels knowing that a man ready and willing to defend armed “vigilantes” won’t even jump to his defense. Or is Tancredo just another “disloyal” “jerk”?

If House Maj. Leader Tom DeLay “chose to resign as majority leader until these matters are resolved, that’s probably not the worst idea.” — Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), Denver Post, 4/15/05