Ignoring the rules

SENATE RULES require that 60 members agree to end debate and force a vote on an issue.

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And the rules themselves are supposed to be firm: They can only be changed by a two-thirds majority -- 67 votes.

Yet the Republican leadership in the Senate, supported by President Bush, is seeking to give lifetime judgeships to right-wing nominees by a simple majority vote, after changing Senate rules by a simple majority vote.

No one claims the maneuver is unconstitutional, but each part constitutes an assault on time-tested institutions of the Senate. It is the tyranny of the majority that James Madison, Alexis de Tocqueville, and countless others have warned against.

Most attention has focused appropriately on the judicial nominees themselves, and the GOP's hypocritical argument that each deserves an up-or-down vote, when the Republicans denied a vote to dozens of President Clinton's nominees. If their strategy works with seven currently pending nominees, Republicans will likely be able to railroad a far-right conservative into any vacancy on the Supreme Court with little trouble.

Equally deplorable are the ugly tactics that would produce this result. If the Republicans go ahead with the ''nuclear option," the mechanics will work something like this: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist will move to end debate on one of the nominees. Failing to get the 60 votes needed, Frist, under a point of order, will ask for a ruling that judicial nominees should not be subject to unlimited debate --the filibuster. Normally, such a question would be referred to the Senate parliamentarian, but that is not expected in this case, because the Republicans would not likely get the answer they want. Instead, the presiding officer, possibly Vice President Cheney in his role as president of the Senate, will rule in Frist's favor. Democrats will object, but Frist will move to table their objection. That motion is not debatable, and needs only a majority to carry.

This is nothing less than piracy. Republicans may argue that judicial nominees should not be subject to the filibuster, but it is clear that they are now under the rules, and that those rules can only be changed with a two-thirds vote.

Judges who sit on the US Appeals and Supreme Courts set policies that touch the lives of every American. They serve for life. If ever there were a reason for a supermajority vote to protect against abuse of majority rule, this would be it. Just because Senate Republicans have concocted this witch's brew of parliamentary tricks to have their way doesn't make it any less poisonous.