US: With Tuesday now looming as "doomsday" in the Senate's confrontation over filibuster rules, time is running out for moderate Senators still frantically trying to bridge the warring factions and avoid what has become known as the "nuclear option".
Senator John Cornyn of Texas, acting on behalf of the Republican majority, yesterday scheduled Tuesday for a vote on Judge Priscilla Owen of Texas, whose nomination to the federal appeals court has been under debate for three days. This will trigger a filibuster by minority Democrats who object to Ms Owen as a judge outside the judicial mainstream.
As things stand Senate majority leader Bill Frist of Tennessee will then call for a ban on filibusters on appeals court and Supreme Court nominees. While it takes 60 votes to overcome a filibuster in the 100-member Senate, Republicans say they can change the rule by a simple majority vote.
With 55 seats, Republicans could afford five defections but still win with the casting vote of vice president Dick Cheney, who is president of the Senate. "If we were just permitted to cast a vote, a bipartisan majority would confirm these nominees today," Senator Cornyn said, referring to seven pending nominations previously blocked by Democrats.
"This really amounts to a veto. A partisan minority has attempted to cast a veto of majority rights, bipartisan majority rights."
Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan retorted that "this extralegal changing of the Senate rules will cause a permanent tear in the Senate fabric" and would produce "a deeply embittered and divided Senate".
A "gang of 12" moderate senators continued yesterday to try to find an agreement that could clear the way for confirmation of many of President Bush's stalled judicial nominees, and preserve some existing filibuster rules. They are doing so against a background of acrimonious debate on the Senate floor.
Republican Senator Rick Santorum yesterday had to retract part of a speech in which he compared Democrats to Adolf Hitler in remarks on Thursday. He had said Democrats were acting like Hitler seizing Paris, and then said: "I'm in Paris. How dare you invade me? How dare you bomb my city? It's mine."
Yesterday Senator Santorum said that "referencing Hitler was meant to dramatise the principle of an argument, not to characterise my Democratic colleagues."
Republican John Warner and Democrat Robert Byrd are leading the 12 moderates who have been trying to draft a compromise plan. If it fails Democrats have threatened to slow the Senate's business to a crawl and this week invoked a rule that prevented some committees from meeting.