Subject: [big campaign] MMAN Launches DemocracyOrHypocrisy.org To Expose Hypocrisy During SCOTUS Confirmation Battle
From: Chris Harris <[email-masked]>
To: "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 10:39:39 -0400
List-Id: <bigcampaign.googlegroups.com>

FYI-

For Immediate Release                                                                                               Contact: Chris Harris
May 26, 2009                                                                                                                       O: 202-756-4120
                                                                                                                                              C: 913-206-3010

Media Matters Action Network Launches DemocracyOrHypocrisy.org

Rabin-Havt: "If Senate Republicans support a filibuster of Judge Sotomayor's nomination, they will make it undeniably clear that they are happy to use the Constitution as a political prop."

WASHINGTON - With the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor as the next Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, Media Matters Action Network announced DemocracyOrHypocrisy.org<http://democracyorhypocrisy.org/>, a new effort to hold Senate conservatives accountable.  In 2005, Senate Republicans passionately professed their opposition to filibustering judicial nominees, even calling such efforts unconstitutional. DemocracyOrHypocrisy.org will hold them to it.

By featuring video and quotations from Senate Republicans, DemocracyOrHypocrisy.org will highlight the blatant hypocrisy of Senators who contradict their own past statements.

 "If Senate Republicans support a filibuster of Judge Sotomayor's nomination, they will make it undeniably clear that they are happy to use the Constitution as a political prop." said Media Matters Action Network managing director Ari Rabin-Havt.  "We will be made acutely aware that they see our founding documents as trivial things, to be revered when they are useful and cast aside when the political winds change direction. Such cynicism is far more deplorable than plain hypocrisy."

Examples include:

Jeff Sessions (R-AL)
"Since the founding of the Republic, we have understood that there was a two-thirds supermajority for ratification and advice and consent on treaties and a majority vote for judges. That is what we have done. That is what we have always done. But there was a conscious decision on behalf of the leadership, unfortunately, of the Democratic Party in the last Congress to systematically filibuster some of the best nominees ever submitted to the Senate. It has been very painful." [Senate Floor Speech, 5/23/05]

Orrin Hatch (R-UT)
"All we are asking is the 214-year tradition of the Senate that judicial nominees not be filibustered be followed. That has been the tradition of the Senate up until President Bush became President. All we are asking is that every one of these qualified nominees who have reached the floor receive an up-or-down vote. That is all we are asking." [Senate Floor Speech, 4/27/05]

John Kyl (R-AZ)
"For 214 years it has been the tradition of the Senate to approve judicial nominees by a majority vote. Many of our judges and, for example, Clarence Thomas, people might recall, was approved by either fifty-one or fifty-two votes as I recall. It has never been the rule that a candidate for judgeship that had majority support was denied the ability to be confirmed once before the Senate. It has never happened before. So we're not changing the rules in the middle of the game. We're restoring the 214-year tradition of the Senate because in the last two years Democrats have begun to use this filibuster. [...] This is strictly about whether or not a minority of senators is going to prevent the president from being able to name and get confirmed judges that he chooses after he's been elected by the American people. And it's never been the case until the last two years that a minority could dictate to the majority what they could do." [NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, "Judicial Wars," 4/25/05]

Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
"Because of the unprecedented obstruction of our Democratic colleagues, the Republican conference intends to restore the principle that, regardless of party, any President's judicial nominees, after full debate, deserve a simple up-or-down vote.  I know that some of our colleagues wish that restoration of this principle were not required. But it is a measured step that my friends on the other side of the aisle have unfortunately made necessary. For the first time in 214 years, they have changed the Senate's 'advise and consent' responsibilities to 'advise and obstruct.' [...]Given those results, many of us had hoped that the politics of obstruction would have been dumped in the dustbin of history. Regretfully, that did not happen." [Senate Floor Speech, 5/19/05<http://mediamattersaction.org/rd?to=http%3A%2F%2Ffrwebgate.access.gpo.gov%2Fcgi-bin%2Fgetpage.cgi%3Fposition%3Dall%26page%3DS5468%26dbname%3D2005_record>]

Media Matters Action Network, a 501(c)(4), is a partner organization to Media Matters for America, a 501(c)(3).  Media Matters for America is the first organization to systematically monitor the media for conservative misinformation every day, in real time.

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Media Matters Action Network is a Web-based, not-for-profit, progressive action and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation.

Chris Harris
Communications & Research Director
Media Matters Action Network
[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>
O: (202) 756-4120
C: (913) 206-3010

AIM: [email-masked]

Sign up for our RSS feeds at http://mediamattersaction.org

Follow us on Twitter: @mmaction<http://twitter.com/mmaction>

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