Filibustering Hypocrisy

With the battle over Democratic filibusters of President Bush's judicial nominees about to escalate, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Sunday "If what Democrats are doing is wrong today, it won’t be right for Republicans to do the same thing tomorrow."

But history shows that Republicans did something similar to the Democrats' filibusters five years ago.

In 1999 and 2000, before he became majority leader, Frist was one of the Republican senators blocking President Clinton’s nominee to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Richard Paez.

Frist and others repeatedly prevented a vote on the Paez nomination. In 1999, Frist and 52 other Republicans voted against a motion to proceed to a vote on Paez.

Six months later, Frist voted against cutting off extended debate — a filibuster — on the nomination.

Then he voted for a motion to postpone a vote on the nomination.

And finally on March 9, 2000, four years after Clinton nominated Paez to the appeals court, Frist was on the losing end of a 59-39 vote on the nomination itself.

There's an entire news story about this today on MSNBC.