Senate nears showdown on judges - Yahoo! News
Tick...tick...tick...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With time running out, a small group of lawmakers said on Thursday they were inching toward a deal to avert a historic Senate confrontation that could strip Democrats of their power to block President Bush's most conservative judicial nominees.

Following a week of mixed signals, members of this group of about a dozen largely moderate senators voiced guarded optimism and vowed to keep trying, possibly right up to climactic votes next week. Talks broke up late on Thursday, and were to resume on Monday.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, is set to force a showdown Tuesday and likely seek a vote to abolish use of procedural roadblocks known as filibusters against candidates for federal courts -- including the Supreme Court. With a handful of Republicans undeclared, it is not certain that Frist will prevail.

But Democrats, angry at what they see as an erosion of the power of the minority party to sway events in the Senate, say if the judicial filibuster is abolished, they will retaliate and create obstacles for many of Bush's legislative priorities.

Despite the slow pace of negotiations, participants said too much was at stake to give up.

Sen. Robert Byrd, the long-serving West Virginia Democrat, said he had put forth the idea of depoliticizing the process by having judges and scholars come up with a pool of potential nominees. A president would not have to draw from the pool, but could consider them.

During these negotiations, Democrats have sought a Republican pledge to preserve the judicial filibuster through 2006. In exchange, the centrist Democrats said they would not back a filibuster except in extreme circumstances. Getting language acceptable to both sides has been a challenge.

No retreat. No surrender. Don't believe anything the Pubs "say" they will or will not do, because they FLAT OUT LIE.

Very pissed that they are even considering ANY sort of compromise on these extremists that Bush has nominated. They were shot down for a reason. If even one of them gets through, it will embolden the Pubs to even more outrageous behavior, and there will be no stopping them.

This is it, kids. It's now or never. Or, it's now until 2006. Think of the damage that can be done in the meantime.