Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

QUESTION: Majority Leader Reid just came out in favor of filibuster reform after he had, um, not been so keen to it the last time we had an opportunity. I know that that’s an area where you’ve done a little bit of work. Do you think that [filibuster reform] is likely to happen when we get the window?

WHITEHOUSE: Yep, I do. . . . I think that the major targets will be the double filibuster, filibustering both the motion to proceed to the bill and then the bill itself. That would be one target. I think the other major target of filibuster reform will be changing the rules of the filibuster so that the filibustering minority actually has to spend time on the floor defending its filibuster, rather than, right now, it’s the majority trying to get to 60 that has to be ready to fend off quorum calls and have all the Senators ready — and only one senator needs to be around from the minority side to defend the filibuster.

Watch it:

The “window” my question refers to is a brief, constitutionally required period every two years shortly after newly-elected senators are sworn in. During this short window, the Senate can alter the filibuster rules or even eliminate the filibuster altogether with just 51 votes. Normally, 67 votes are required to change the Senate’s rules.

As ThinkProgress previously explained, Senate Democrats may not have a choice when the next window opens next January, assuming that Democrats maintain control of the Senate and the White House. Longtime Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) was recently defeated in the GOP Senate primary by a candidate who objected to Lugar’s votes for Supreme Court Justices Sotomayor and Kagan. In light of this precedent, it is likely that the few Senate Republicans who were unwilling to obstruct these two nominees will see the Tea Party in their rear view mirror during the next confirmation fight, and will fear being Lugared. If Senate Democrats do not take their next opportunity to pass filibuster reform, the consequence could be a complete inability to fill Supreme Court vacancies.

Ninth Circuit Nominee Paul Watford

The cases against these two nominees were flimsy at best, even from a conservative perspective. Liu’s enjoyed the support of conservative icons like Clinton-inquistor Ken Starr and torture advocate John Yoo. Senators opposing his nomination offered little more than misrepresentation of his scholarship or hyperbolic claims that he wanted to turn America into “communist-run China.” The case against Halligan was even weaker, and largely boiled down to the fact that she once represented a client — the State of New York — that disagreed with the NRA.

On Monday, the Senate will try to break yet another filibuster — this time on Ninth Circuit nominee Paul Watford. And, once again, it’s tough to imagine a good reason to support this filibuster. Watford is a leading young attorney and a former Supreme Court clerk. He has a small army of conservative supporters, including nearly every single person who clerked for a Supreme Court justice at the time Watford worked on the Court. And his opponents have barely even managed to articulate a reason to oppose him. The best they’ve come up with is that, in a legal career that stretches twenty years, he represented two clients that Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) doesn’t like.

Unfortunately for Watford, however, he is guilty of being the kind of exceptionally talented attorney who could be on the Supreme Court some day. If past is prologue, that will be reason enough for conservatives to filibuster him.

During last year’s debt ceiling crisis, which Speaker John Boehner has threatened to repeat next year, House and Senate Republicans threatened to force the United States to default on its debt — an outcome that would have caused “a bigger GDP drop than that experienced during the Great Recession of 2008″ — unless President Obama agreed to an increasingly escalating series of demands for austerity. Even after this campaign of extortion forced the White House to make significant concessions, Fischer indicated that she would have simply let the economy blow up because Congress didn’t also agree to a constitutional amendment:

Nebraska’s 2012 Republican Senate candidates turned thumbs down Monday on the compromise debt reduction plan agreed to by the White House and congressional leaders.

“I would vote no on this specific bill because Congress needs to pass a balanced budget (constitutional) amendment first,” said state Sen. Deb Fischer of Valentine.

It’s not clear which version of the balanced budget amendment Fischer is referring to here, but even the mildest forms of such an amendment are terrible ideas because they prevent the United States from responding to economic downturns or unexpected disasters, while simultaneously turning control of the nation’s budget over to unelected judges who are ill-equipped to handle it.

Moreover, at the time that Fischer endorsed blowing up the economy unless Congress votes to change the Constitution, the leading Republican proposal for such an amendment imposed such draconian spending cuts that it would “throw about 15 million more people out of work, double the unemployment rate from 9 percent to approximately 18 percent, and cause the economy to shrink by about 17 percent instead of growing by an expected 2 percent.” The lead sponsor of this plan to trigger a new Great Depression, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), also called for forcing a debt default unless Congress gives him everything he wants.

In other words, while little is known about the obscure state lawmaker who wants to join the United States Senate, her willingness to play chicken with America’s prosperity strongly suggests that she would line up with the most hardline members of the Republican caucus.

Rep. John Lewis (D-GA)

In the end, the Constitution proscribed six instances in which Congress would require more than a majority vote: impeaching the president, expelling members, overriding a presidential veto of a bill or order, ratifying treaties and amending the Constitution. . . . “The Framers were aware of the established rule of construction, expressio unius est exclusio alterius, and that by adopting these six exceptions to the principle of majority rule, they were excluding other exceptions.” By contrast, in the Bill of Rights, the Founders were careful to state that “the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

As a textual matter, this is a strong constitutional argument. Yet it is likely not to get off the ground because of something known as the “political question doctrine.” As the Supreme Court explained in Baker v. Carr, federal courts generally should avoid deciding questions where there is a “textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of the issue to a coordinate political department” — meaning that the Constitution’s text suggests that an issue should be decided by the executive or legislative branch and not by the judiciary. Because the Constitution provides that “[e]ach House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings,” the courts are likely — although not entirely certain — to dismiss this case because the Constitution reserves questions of Senate procedure to the Senate itself.

In other words, this lawsuit is likely to highlight why it is so important for the Senate itself to reform the filibuster to prevent the minority from shutting down America’s ability to effectively govern itself. And the Senate will have an opportunity to do so in about seven months. Once every two years, when the newly elected senators are sworn in, a brief window opens up when the Senate can reform its rules with only 51 votes.

In the video, released Monday, Kerrey begins by lining up some of the extraordinary costs — human and financial — of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially the tolls these conflicts have taken on members of the armed services. Kerrey then puts Iran in context to these countries: “80 million people in Iran?” He then says of a potential large-scale war with Iran:

I think it would be a disaster. … It’ll make Iraq and Afghanistan look like a cakewalk.

Watch the campaign video:

The reference to a “cakewalk” should not be lost on anyone: that’s how Bush administration adviser Kenneth Adelman suggested an invasion of Iraq would play out. Nearly 5,000 dead service members and costs that could rise to as much as $1.5 trillion later, the Bush administration’s march to Baghdad was anything but the easy-going adventure they promised. Likewise, Iran hawks (many of them the same characters who pushed for the Iraq war) downplay the potential costs of war with Iran.

Kerrey’s entrée into the Iran debate seems particularly important, as journalist Jim Lobe points out, precisely because Kerrey, in the run up to the Iraq war, was aligned with the factions pressing hardest for an attack and invasion. Kerrey, a decorated Vietnam veteran and sometimes-hawkish Democrat, served on the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a neoconservative dominated pressure group that relentlessly pursued regime change.

A potential Iranian nuclear weapon is widely considered a threat to both the security of the U.S. and its allies in the region, and the nuclear non-proliferation regime, though U.S. and Israeli intelligence have not concluded that Iran has made a decision to pursue a weapon. The Obama administration vows to keep “all options on the table” to deal with the possibility, but the efficacy and consequences of a strike raise serious questions, leading the U.S. to pursue, for the meantime, a pressure track aimed at a negotiated resolution of the Iranian nuclear crisis.

After the Senate acts on the 14 agreed-upon judges, there are eight more already teed up for a full Senate vote. An additional eight are in the Senate Judiciary Committee pipeline. And that panel’s chairman, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), says he’ll begin work on 11 more judges in the next few weeks.

That’s a total of 41 potentially approved judges.

If the Senate does, in fact, approve them all, Obama’s number of confirmed judges will stand at 172.

To put that in perspective, by the end of May in their respective first terms, George W. Bush had 175 judges approved, and Bill Clinton had 183.

In other words, even if the Senate were to confirm every single one of Obama’s pending nominees before the end of May — a tall order in the hyper-obstructionist era of Mitch McConnell — the president would still lag three judges behind his immediate predecessor. But, of course, there is no deal currently in place to confirm more than 14 of these nominees, which means the Obama Administration is now on track to be 30 judges behind President Bush absent additional confirmations.

REID: I’ve got a great idea. My friend the Republican Leader said these judges are all going to get approved anyway, so I’ve got an idea. Let’s go to this IPO bill immediately after finishing the highway bill, with the agreement that we’ll dispose of these judges immediately after that. . . .

McCONNELL: It is highly unlikely any of these district judges are not going to be confirmed. We’ve done a number of them this year. We’ve done seven this year. District judges are almost never defeated. This is just a very transparent attempt to try to slam dunk the minority and make them look like they are obstructing things they aren’t obstructing. We object to that. We don’t think that meets the standard of civility that should be expected in the Senate. And, so, any effort to make the minority look bad or attempt to slam dunk them that is sort of manufactured as this is is gonna, of course, be greeted with resistance.

Watch it:

Let’s explain what’s going on here. Both Reid and McConnell agree that there is nothing objectionable about these judges — in McConnell’s words, “it is highly unlikely any of these district judges are not going to be confirmed.” Additionally, both men agree that the Senate should vote on the “IPO bill” that Reid refers to, a bill dealing with investments in small businesses that recently passed the House. Initially, Reid wanted to vote on the seventeen judges awaiting confirmation before moving on to the IPO bill, but he even concedes this point — saying that he is willing to “go to this IPO bill” first as McConnell prefers.

And then McConnell says this deal is unacceptable because Reid “ma[de] the minority look bad.”

If this is truly McConnell’s reason for blocking these judges, then he just made an absolutely shocking admission. Thanks to excessive judicial vacancies, America’s courts are increasingly unable to function. In some courts, judges are so overburdened they have to rush major felony cases through as if they involved minor traffic violations. In one court, felony caseloads nearly doubled in just two years. Every court that is unable to handle its caseload means wrongly fired workers waiting months or years for justice and businesses that must delay making new hires until they are sure they won’t be hit with an unwarranted legal judgment. And yet McConnell says he is willing to punish all of these workers and businesses because he is upset that Reid has made him look bad. America can ill afford this kind of tantrum.

Regrettably, Lee’s fellow Tea Partier Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) has now decided to follow Lee’s lead:

DeMint, who voted last fall for two Obama judicial choices from South Carolina, said he’s now rejecting all of the president’s nominees to protest his winter recess appointments of four controversial nominees to avoid GOP opposition.

“President Obama has shown a complete disdain for the people’s elected representatives and our duty to advise and consent on nominations,” DeMint told McClatchy.

“Unless he revokes his unprecedented recess appointments that defied the constitutional role of Congress, I don’t intend to support any of his judicial nominees this year,” DeMint said.

Needless to say, Lee and DeMint are wrong about the constitutionality of the president’s recess appointments. They and many of their fellow congressional Republicans have argued that the Senate can defeat the president’s recess appointments power by having a single senator hit the Senate’s gavel twice every three days (this is not an exaggeration). Yet, as two of President George W. Bush’s top constitutional advisors explained in 2010, the question of whether the president can make recess appointments does not turn on whether the Senate engages in some empty formality, rather, “the question ‘is whether in a practical sense the Senate is in session so that its advice and consent can be obtained.’”

Because the Senate was out of town and conducting no business when the president named his recent recess appointments, there is no good reason to doubt their constitutionality.

Moments earlier, Republicans killed an amendment that would have approved the pipeline if it used American steel and kept the oil for American use.

Family Research Council Founder James Dobson

Senate Republicans who persist in obstructing these nominees would do well to listen to the advice they received from Christian conservative leaders* such as Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Lou Sheldon, Rod Parsley, Frank Pavone, Miguel Rivera, Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer, and Rick Scarborough, who slammed judicial filibusters as, in Dobson’s words, a direct attack on “the future of democracy and ordered liberty.”

Watch some highlights here:

*These religious leaders made these claims when George W. Bush was president. But, of course, that doesn’t matter because — in the words of Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) — “we need to treat all nominees exactly the same, regardless of whether they’re nominated by a Democrat or a Republican president.”**

**Cornyn’s statement was also made when George W. Bush was president.

Center for American Progress Action Fund intern Linda Benesch contributed to this report.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) with President Obama.

They shouldn’t be forced to issue a permit until they are satisfied on the environmental effects involved. So I think that point is valid. Whether that requires another six or eight months, that’s open to question. It is a good issue to try to get resolved some way or another. The American public would like to see us go ahead with the project to the extent they know what the project entails. It sounds meritorious. We’ve got pipelines all over the country. That is true with most members of Congress, too. I think most members of Congress probably would like to go ahead to get the issue resolved.

Watch it:

Bingaman’s claim about the American public’s support for the foreign tar sands project is incorrect. A recent poll from Hart Research Associates found that Americans who are informed about the pros and cons of the pipeline don’t want it built by a 14-point margin. Americans without this information — influenced by the extreme pro-pipeline bias in corporate media — support the pipeline by an 11-point margin.

Bingaman also rejected Republican claims that there is an “urgency about getting this permit approved,” because oil production is so high that the United States is a net exporter of petroleum products.

If built, the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline would put six states at risk of toxic oil spills along its 1700-mile route, and would add about five billion tons of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere over its intended 50-year lifespan of bringing dirty crude from Alberta to Gulf Coast refineries for foreign export.

Other Democratic senators who have expressed support for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline include finance chair Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), budget chair Kent Conrad (D-ND), Jon Tester (D-MT), Joe Manchin (D-WV), Mark Begich (D-AK), Ben Nelson (D-NE), and Claire McCaskill (D-MO). Nelson and Baucus have criticized Republican attempts to speed approval, while Manchin has signed on with the GOP.

Transcript:

Q: Moving on to the Keystone XL pipeline, Mr. Chairman, this is a major issue that’s coming up in both chambers of Congress. the White House continues to push it off to 2013 saying we have not rejected this project on the merits. We want to give it a full review over this longer period. Republicans obviously object, say it’s been reviewed for three years. How do you feel the White House has handled this? Is it time for them to come to a compromise with the company given with the issue has become?

BINGAMAN: The basic point they are making is a valid one. They shouldn’t be forced to issue a permit until they are satisfied on the environmental effects involved. So I think that point is valid. Whether that requires another six or eight months, that’s open to question. It is a good issue to try to get resolved some way or another. The American public would like to see us go ahead with the project to the extent they know what the project entails. It sounds meritorious. We’ve got pipelines all over the country. That is true with most members of Congress, too. I think most members of Congress probably would like to go ahead to get the issue resolved. Maybe there’s way to get it resolved contingent on certain things being determined. I don’t know.

Q: Would you consider using the Tuesday forums you have with Senate leadership as a way to come together with Democrats in the Senate and find a way forward on Keystone?

BINGAMAN: I think that frankly the Congress is reacting to actions by the administration here. We need to see what the administration is going to do. If the course of action that’s described by the administration is reasonable, then I would hope to support that. The idea that there is an urgency about getting this permit approved, I don’t buy into that. The truth is we have a lot of oil. We are refining more petroleum products than we can use in this country. We are exporting petroleum products. Oil production’s up. Gas production is up. The idea that we have an economic challenge that needs a streamlined process, I don’t buy that. There are jobs that are going to be created, and that’s good. There are lots of things that we’ve got on our plate that will create jobs that I’m sure will be reflected in the president’s budget.

During the 2010 campaign, then-Rep. Zack Space (D-OH) began the recent trend with an ad supposedly depicting a parade in China — the actual footage was of Asian Americans in San Francisco — and a tagline “thanking” his opponent: “As they say in China, xie xie Mr. Gibbs!” An anti-spending front group, Citizens Against Government Waste, followed suit with a cryptic ad raising the prospect that our national debt would cause America’s economic downfall and soon force us to work for the Chinese. Most reprehensibly, Mark Amodei ran an ad in a Nevada special election depicting a Chinese military invasion in front of the U.S. Capitol building as it flies the Chinese flag.

Former Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), currently running to unseat Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), is the latest to try to stoke anti-Chinese fears for political gain. His new ad, entitled “Now”, shows a woman in what’s meant to be rural China speaking broken English and thanking Stabenow because “we take your jobs.” “Your economy get very weak, ours get very good,” the woman says. “Hoekstra’s mock website hosting the ad features Chinese characters adorned with two Chinese flags. Watch it:

These ads are not-so-subtly intended to provoke nativist fears, and do so by purveying unfortunate stereotypes. Yet despite Hoekstra’s fear-mongering, the fact remains that China still holds just 9.5 percent of the United States’ debt, over four times less than what American bondholders own.

Given this President’s blatant and egregious disregard both for proper constitutional procedures and the Senate’s unquestioned role in such appointments, I find myself duty-bound to resist the consideration and approval of additional nominations until the President takes steps to remedy the situation. Regardless of the precise course I choose to pursue, the President certainly will not continue to enjoy my nearly complete cooperation, unless and until he rescinds his unconstitutional recess appointments.

Watch it:

At the outset, it’s important to note that there is no one in America who has less stature to claim that someone else shows “blatant and egregious disregard” for the Constitution than Mike Lee. Lee believes that federal child labor laws, FEMA, food stamps, the FDA, Medicaid, income assistance for the poor, and even Medicare and Social Security violate the Constitution. Taking Mike Lee’s advice on constitutional law is a bit like taking John “Bluto” Blutarsky’s advice on American military history.

Moreover, Lee’s suggestion that he has shown “nearly complete cooperation” in the past is laughably false. Lee openly admits that he filibustered Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray’s nomination because he wanted to sabotage that consumer protection agency, and he filibustered an exceptional nominee to the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit because she had the audacity to do her job properly when she was Solicitor General of New York.

Fortunately, the Lee/Grassley plan for scorched earth retaliation does not seem to be resonating with much of the Senate GOP. Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) recently said that he “would be surprised if you see mass reprisals,” and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) — who has his own history of aggressive obstructionism — waived off Lee and Grassley’s angry tactic because he doesn’t think it will be a “particularly effective strategy.”

Nevertheless, the Senate’s broken rules enable just one senator to work a great deal of obstructionist mischief even if the other 99 vehemently disagree. Indeed, the fact that the current rules allow someone with the poor judgment of a Mike Lee to work such havoc shows why Obama was right to call for filibuster reform in his State of the Union speech this week. America can ill afford to have its ability to have a functioning government rest in the hands of the Senate’s most radical member.

Virginia State Delegate Bob Marshall (R)

Some of Bob Marshall’s greatest hits:

1. Suggested that children born with disabilities are God’s punishment to women who have previously had abortions. “When you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children,” he said.

2. Warned homosexual behavior “undermines the American economy” in an angry letter to the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond after it flew a rainbow flag. The flag “celebrated” homosexual acts, which Marshall said are Class 6 felony in the state. He has also called homosexuality a “disordered behavior.”

3. Warned repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) will “jeopardize our alliances,” especially with Muslim countries, because foreign troops will refuse to fight alongside gay Americans.

4. After DADT was repealed, introduced legislation banning “active homosexuals” from joining the Virginia National Guard.

5. Called the Affordable Care Act “criminal” and an attempt to steal “your soul.”

6. Thinks the best answer to school shootings is to arm professors, sponsoring a bill to “allow faculty members to carry concealed handguns on college campuses.”

7. Advocated unconstitutional bills to allow Virginia to ignore laws passed by the U.S Congress.

8. Sponsored a bill to require schools to designate a 5-minute period each day for students to “read morally or ethically relevant materials.”

9. Sponsored a bill that would make the use of profane, indecent, or threatening language in a personal e-mail a misdemeanor.”

10. Sponsored the “Marshall-Newman” anti-gay marriage amendment in 2006, which was written so broadly that many warned it could “undermine the rights of all unmarried couples to enter into contracts, enforce wills and child custody agreements or receive the protection of domestic violence laws.”

Despite his impeccable right-wing credentials, Marshall will have stiff competition for conservative voters in the race from tea party organizer Jamie Radtke, fringe-conservative minister E.W. Jackson, and businessman David McCormick, who are all running to the right of frontrunner George Allen, the former senator best known for using the racial slur “macaca.”

The Koch Five are Sens. Tom Coburn (R-OK), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Marco Rubio (R-FL), and Ron Johnson (R-WI), who have received a combined $187,400 in campaign contributions from the Koch empire:

The Kochs were the top contributors to Ron Johnson’s successful campaign to unseat Russ Feingold in 2010. Like first-termers Rubio and Johnson, Coburn has a perfect lifetime Koch score.

Although recess appointments that occur while the Senate is at least pretending to conduct business every three days are rare, they are rare for a very simple reason. Few people in American history have done more to obstruct American governance than Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and his fellow Senate Republicans. As such, it has rarely been necessary for a president to use his constitutionally granted authority to appoint officials during a very short recess.

There are no modern precedents for McConnell-style mass obstructionism, and there is no Supreme Court decision considering how long senators must be out of Washington before recess appointments are allowed. There was, however, a showdown during the Bush Administration over President Bush’s decision to recess appoint Judge William Pryor to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. In Evans v. Stephens, that court considered whether Pryor’s appointment was invalid because it occurred during a very short legislative break. This court is the highest legal authority ever to weigh in on the question of whether a break in the Senate’s calendar must last a certain number of days before a recess occurs, and it answered that question with an unambiguous “no”:

The Constitution, on its face, does not establish a minimum time that an authorized break in the Senate must last to give legal force to the President’s appointment power under the Recess Appointments Clause. And we do not set the limit today.

There are a number of well-established precedents demonstrating the president’s authority to make recess appointments during very brief recesses. In 1903, when the first session of the 58th Congress ended, President Theodore Roosevelt made over 160 recess appointments during a recess that lasted only a fraction of a day. Similarly, President Truman twice made recess appointments during recesses that lasted just a handful of days.

A few commentators have suggested that this precedent only applies to what are known as “intersession” recesses — that is, the recess that occurs around the beginning of each new year when one session of Congress ends and another begins. Under this theory, President Obama blew his chance to make recess appointments when he allowed the second session of the 112th Congress to begin at noon today without making any appointments. This argument, however, has no basis in the Constitution itself. As Evans explains, “the text of the Constitution does not differentiate expressly between inter- and intrasession recesses for the Recess Appointments Clause,” and “the main purpose of the Recess Appointments Clause—to enable the President to fill vacancies to assure the proper functioning of our government —supports reading both intrasession recesses and intersession recesses as within the correct scope of the Clause.”

Recess appointments during very brief recesses are not common, but they are only uncommon because few if any senators have ever engaged in the kind of systematic and determined effort to prevent America from governing itself that began once Mitch McConnell took over as Senate Minority Leader. McConnell’s rampant obstructionism can be summed up in just one chart:

That chart represents the number of times a cloture motion — a motion seeking to break a Senate filibuster — was filed in every recent Congress. The massive spike at the end, where the number of cloture motions more than doubles, coincides with when McConnell took over as Minority Leader.

Moreover, this twofold increase in cloture votes — from 68 when Harry Reid was Minority Leader to a massive 139 once McConnell took over as head of the Senate’s opposition –massively undershoots the extent to which obstructionism increased under McConnell. Under the Senate’s broken rules, breaking filibusters imposes a crippling delay on the Senate’s business. For this reason, the lion’s share of McConnell’s obstructionism never leads to a cloture vote because doing so would tie the Senate up for days on trifling matters such as a motion to end debate on whether or not to debate a bill. Indeed, it is literally impossible to confirm more than a handful of the president’s nominees if just a small group of senators engage in maximal obstructionism.

Currently, four states — Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, and Virginia — permanently disenfranchise any resident convicted of a felony, even after he or she has been released from prison. Another seven states — Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Mississippi, Nevada, Tennessee, and Wyoming — permanently disenfranchise people convicted of certain felonies.

If passed, the Democracy Restoration Act would restore voting rights to felons who have finished serving their sentence. Cardin explained the rationale for his bill in a press release Friday:

If we truly want to break the cycle of recidivism, we need to reintegrate former prisoners back into society. When prisoners are released, they are expected to obey the law, get a job, and pay taxes as they are rehabilitated and reintegrated into their community. With these responsibilities and obligations of citizenship should also come the rights of citizenship, including the right to vote.

Felon disenfranchisement is an issue that disproportionately affects African Americans. Of the more than two million Americans barred from voting despite finishing their felony sentence, the ACLU notes that 1.4 million – 70 percent – are black. This is acutely true in states like Virginia, Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama, where African Americans make up a substantial portion of the voting electorate, yet their power is diminished by state disenfranchisement laws.

Cardin’s bill, which has been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee, is co-sponsored by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).

At the end of a rare Saturday session, the Senate’s last day of official business for the year, McConnell blocked an effort by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to confirm more than 50 executive and judicial branch nominations awaiting Senate action.

And he laid out a condition to releasing his objection: “confirmation from the administration that it will respect practice and precedent on recess appointments.”

McConnell added that he needed from the White House “assurances that have been routinely given at this point with regard to recess appointments.”

It’s unclear just what “practice or precedent” McConnell is referring to, but there is no one who has less standing to complain about unprecedented action than McConnell himself — the lead architect of the Senate GOP’s nihilistic campaign to make it impossible for President Obama to govern. Without an agency head in place, the CFPB cannot perform many of its core functions. Yet, Senate Republicans are filibustering CFPB director-in-waiting Richard Cordray in order to sabotage this newly created consumer protection agency. If McConnell really cares one bit about respecting “practice and precedent,” he can show it by ending this blockade and recognizing that the Senate minority does not have the legitimate authority to effectively repeal an entire agency.

McConnell could also show that he respects practice and precedent by returning the Senate to the way it operated before he became minority leader. Simply put, no one in recent American history has done more to abuse the filibuster than Mitch McConnell — as demonstrated by the massive spike in votes attempting to break filibusters once McConnell took over the minority caucus:

President Obama is not powerless, however, against McConnell’s effort to sabotage the CFPB. If McConnell will not end his blockade, Obama can invoke the Roosevelt Precedent, which allows him to appoint Cordray the second the Senate adjourns for the year.