Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Frist Blogs Nuclear Option Threat


Frist is still whining about the day that the Dems took charge of the Senate by invoking Rule 21. And he's blogging the whine, or blogwhining. He's also looking ahead to the ScAlito senate confirmation hearings and threatening to pull the nuclear option trigger.

But Frist isn't calling it the 'nuclear option.' Republicans are so into newspeak. Their newspeak term for the nuclear option is the 'constitutional option.'

Stay tuned, any day now Republicans will be calling torture the 'constitutional imperative.'

We do not torture! We enforce the constitutional imperative!

The comments at the Frist whineblog are moderated. Apparently, that means only Radical Republicans are permitted to comment (update: dissenting comments are now up, but Frist still doesn't answer my letters). Frist likes to pretend that there are only Radical Republicans in Tennessee. When Tennessee Dems or even moderate Republicans write him letters they go into the same garbage can as the dissenting comments on his whineblog.

Snippets from the Frist Whineblog:

Last week's absurd, unwarranted and disingenuous call for a closed session of the United States Senate sent me a clear message: Many Democrats have decided to mock the Senate's rules in the name of partisan advantage. For more than three years, the Democrats have abused Senate rules to impede the judicial nomination process. To do this, they used a technique called the filibuster--a refusal to end debate and vote.

I hope that the Senate will conduct Alito's confirmation process with customary courtesy and civility. The process should move toward a January vote in an orderly manner. But if the Democratic minority chooses to obstruct the confirmation process, abuse Senate rules and violate the Constitution, I will not hesitate to put the constitutional option before my colleagues.

And if that doesn't work, Frist plans to invoke the undisclosed torture chamber option, er, I mean the constitutional imperative.

Hat tip to The Stakeholder

UPDATE: Frist has this very same blog post as an Op-ed at the Chicago Tribune. According to John at Americablog, Frist must have gotten turned down by the big papers.