by Scott Ott
(2005-05-20) -- Sen. John McCain, R-AZ, today announced that a group of moderates from both major parties had conceived a compromise that would abort Republican efforts to force up-or-down votes on the president's judicial nominees.
"We labored late into the night over various conceptions of this deal," said Sen. McCain. "It was tough to keep our eyelids dilated but we extracted meaningful promises from our colleagues on the other side."
The compromise takes the novel approach of redefining the moment when a potential judge actually becomes a 'nominee'.
The Republican moderates and mavericks have agreed to define a 'nominee' as 'a person nominated by the president more than 90 days ago'.
As a result, Sen. McCain said, "any Democrat filibuster efforts during what we'll call 'the first trimester' after nomination won't be considered unethical."
However, the deal almost collapsed when Democrats objected that a number of the president's most repugnant pro-life judicial nominees were actually nominated last year.
"We felt compassion for our liberal friends," the Arizona Senator said. "So, we included an exception that would allow the Democrats the choice of eliminating a nominee after the first trimester if seating that person on the court would jeopardize the health of the Democrat party."
Legal experts say the compromise effectively preserves the genteel atmosphere of the Senate by disposing of an issue that some alarmist conservatives had treated as 'a matter of life and death'.
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