The Black Commentator: Bad, Bad Janice Brown is Back

The GOP Judicial Theater of the Absurd is on the road, this time with a biblical theme, starring Janice Rogers Brown and Priscilla R. Owen, Supreme Court Justices in their home states of California and Texas, respectively. The two were among ten Republican nominees given the hook in George Bush’s first term, through threats of Democratic filibusters. Now armed with an invisible mandate, Republicans vow to exercise their “nuclear option” by changing the 200-year-old rules of the Senate to end filibusters of judicial nominees if Brown and Owen are not allowed seats on the federal appellate bench – a heartbeat away from the U.S. Supreme Court. Democrats say that if Republicans pull the nuclear trigger, they will respond by shutting down the Senate.