Sen. Arlen Specter this morning on ABC’s This Week:

SPECTER: Well, there’s never been a filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee.

An excerpt from the history section of the official Senate website:

October 1, 1968
Filibuster Derails Supreme Court Appointment

In June 1968, Chief Justice Earl Warren informed President Lyndon Johnson that he planned to retire from the Supreme Court. Concern that Richard Nixon might win the presidency later that year and get to choose his successor dictated Warren’s timing.

[Snip]

Although the committee recommended confirmation, floor consideration sparked the first filibuster in Senate history on a Supreme Court nomination.

Why is so hard for Senators to get the basic facts about the judicial filibuster right?

You know Tom DeLay is in trouble when his supporters are forced to set the bar this low. Congressional Quarterly [sub. required] picks up this quote from Rep. Ray LaHood (R-IL):

People really do see the distinction between civil and criminal cases. I don’t think it is as big a deal if something civilly happens.

I wonder what LaHood has to say about OJ Simpson…

Angered by a recent Law and Order episode that referenced him, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay wrote to the head of NBC and stated, “This manipulation of my name and trivialization of the sensitive issue of judicial security represents a reckless disregard for the suffering initiated by recent tragedies and a great disservice to public discourse.”

DeLay assumed the Law and Order reference came because of his March 31st 2005 threat: “Mrs. Schiavo’s death is a moral poverty and a legal tragedy. This loss happened because our legal system did not protect the people who need protection most, and that will change. The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior, but not today.”

So in his letter to the president of NBC, DeLay defended the threat by saying, “When a responsible journalist like [Fox News Channel's] Brit Hume made an inquiry into such comments, he quickly understood them to be limited to Congress’s oversight responsibilities and nothing more.”

Wait. Why is DeLay trying to trot out his original defense of the threat: “Nothing in my statement was threatening, irresponsible, dangerous, inappropriate, intimidating, or reckless…No sincere interpretation of my statement could lead a reader to any other conclusion.”

We’ve already gone through this. The comments were reckless and even DeLay agreed when he apologized for them: “I said something in an inartful way, and I shouldn’t have said it that way, and I apologize for saying it that way…I didn’t explain it or clarify my remarks, as I’m clarifying them here…I am sorry that I said it that way, and I shouldn’t have.”

To defend his March 8, 2000, filibuster of Judge Richard Paez, Majority Leader Bill Frist said that voting against cloture to get more information is OK and should be distinguished from an ordinary filibuster. Here’s Frist on the 11/14/04 Face the Nation:

Filibuster, cloture, it gets confusing–as a scheduling or to get more information is legitimate.

Yesterday, Frist described voting against cloture to get more information on ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton as “partisan sniping.” Frist took pains to emphasize that there was no difference between delaying a nomination to get more information and a filibuster:

It certainly sounds like a filibuster…. It quacks like a filibuster.

Of course, when Frist voted against cloture of Paez, the nomination had been pending for four years and he was looking to block the nomination, not get more information. In this case, the Bush administration is refusing to release critical documents regarding Bolton’s conduct in the State Department.

During a 5/17 press conference, Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita was asked about the mistreatment of the Koran by guards and interrogators at Guantanamo Bay. DiRita replied:

[W]hen a specific, credible allegation of this nature were to be received, we would take it quite seriously. But we’ve not seen specific, credible allegations.

Now, we learn that there were at least five confirmed incidents of Koran mistreatment. We’ve also learned this from Brigadier General Jay Hood via the Washington Post:

[A] soldier was reassigned after one recent accidental mishandling of the Koran, and another soldier faced an unspecified disciplinary action for an incident some time ago.

This proves DiRita’s statement was completely false. Not only have there been credible allegations of Koran mistreatment but those allegations were substantiated and at least one individual was punished.

Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC), the congressman who demanded Capitol Hill restaurants change their menus to read “freedom fries” and “freedom toast,” has lost his appetite for the Iraq war. According to the Guardian:

Walter Jones, the Republican congressman for North Carolina who was also the brains behind french toast becoming freedom toast in Capitol Hill restaurants, told a local newspaper the US went to war “with no justification”.
…
Asked by a reporter for the North Carolina News and Observer about the name-change campaign – an idea Mr Jones said at the time came to him by a combination of God’s hand and a constituent’s request – he replied: “I wish it had never happened.”

Although he voted for the war, he has since become one of its most vociferous opponents on Capitol Hill, where the hallway outside his office is lined with photographs of the “faces of the fallen”.

“If we were given misinformation intentionally by people in this administration, to commit the authority to send boys, and in some instances girls, to go into Iraq, that is wrong,” he told the newspaper. “Congress must be told the truth.”

Before the ink had even dried on the filibuster deal, conservatives began inventing exceptions and loopholes so at a later date they could push their agenda through with a clear conscience or cry foul when things don’t work in their favor. First Senator Mike DeWine (R-OH). Then Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN). And now the White House.

At today’s press briefing, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan was asked how the President felt about the fact that some of his nominees were being given passage while others were not. McClellan responded, “It’s my understanding the agreement was silent on those [two nominees].” Actually, far from remaining “silent” on the two nominees, the agreement names them specifically and states: “Signatories make no commitment to vote for or against cloture on the following judicial nominees: William Myers (9th Circuit) and Henry Sadd (6th Circuit).” In acknowleding the right of senators to filibuster at least in “extraordinary circumstances,” the signatories agreed these two Bush nominees meet that standard and should be withdrawn or subject to filibuster.

It’s hard to trust that someone is going to keep to his word when there are people who keep trying to change those words.