Daily Howler - May 10, 2005

FOR INFORMATION, READ THE OPINIONS! Again, a Times op-ed gives information you can’t get in news reports:

TUESDAY, MAY 10, 2005

TONIGHT ON CHANNEL 666: Omigod! Tonight—Ann Coulter, appearing on Leno! Of course, Jay has outdone our fact-challenged “journalists” at least once in the past (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 11/10/98). Maybe he’ll even question Coulter’s “mistakes”—the mistakes Time hunted for so hard, but just couldn’t manage to locate.

FOR INFORMATION, READ THE OPINIONS: Omigod! In today’s New York Times, readers actually get some basic info about judicial filibusters. Here is the passage in question:
NEW YORK TIMES (5/10/05): Since 1789, the Senate has rejected nearly 20 percent of all nominees to the Supreme Court, many without an up-or-down vote.

In 1968 Republican senators used a filibuster to block voting on President Lyndon B. Johnson's nominee for chief justice of the Supreme Court. During the debate, a Republican senator, Robert Griffin, said: "It is important to realize that it has not been unusual for the Senate to indicate its lack of approval for a nomination by just making sure that it never came to a vote on the merits. As I said, 21 nominations to the [Supreme] court have failed to win Senate approval. But only nine of that number were rejected on a direct, up-and-down vote."