Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Putting the Senate in receivership

Tony Blankley:

Well, it would seem that the Senate has been placed in to receivership by 14 self-appointed trustees, several of whom are among the Senate's most wanton exhibitionists. Some of these ladies and gentlemen can be seen almost daily preening in front of television cameras confessing their moral superiority over their colleagues by virtue of their lack of firm convictions and their unwillingness to be team players.
Ironically, they have just formed the most exclusive club in the Senate, which was, until Monday evening, itself the world's most exclusive club.

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The president need not check with the seven Republican senators because their only job is to keep the Republican leadership powerless. It is exclusively the Democratic senators who are empowered to give their imperial thumbs up or down signals.

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Whatever they are, they are not defenders of tradition. For starters, they have converted the allegedly traditional authority of a minority of 41 to block passage or confirmation into an empowered minority of three. Any three Democratic Regents may block a judicial nomination. By organizing into a blocking mechanism — and presumably swearing blood oaths of loyalty to each other in a secret ceremony out of sight of the uninitiated — they have created a new "tradition." Already they are taking on the trappings of a governing entity. On Monday night they didn't issue a press release — as senators and congressmen usually do. Instead they issued a "Memorandum of Understanding on Judicial Nominations" on plain Senate stationery, subscribed by the 14 self-chosen ones. I assume in due time they will have their own stationery printed up. Gold-embossed I shouldn't wonder.
They will become the object of special pleading from other senators and from outside interest groups. Having seized power they will be treated as power holders always are — with fear, supplication, envy, resentment and finally revolt. Surely other groups of senators will quietly form to attempt to influence the Regents on and with collateral matters.
Once they go to work on Social Security reform, as Mr. Graham promised Monday night in an audience he gave to Chris Matthews on MSNBC, they will have expanded their power to include legislation. Their 14 en bloc votes would be decisive. Given their policy proclivities, we can assume tax increases but not private accounts will be included in their bill, which will be enrolled on the mountain top before they come down to deliver it to their colleagues in the Senate.
The art of being them requires that they act in secret together and present a common front. If they permit individual negotiation after they have reached their accord, they will lose all their power.
But for the time being they have the power — which was until Monday afternoon in the possession of President Bush and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.

Graham is fooling himself if he thinks his betrayel will be forgotten at his next election.