Bill Bennett: “She concludes with this comment: I don't pretend to know how Brown will rule on other important issues likely to reach…”

“She concludes with this comment: I don't pretend to know how Brown will rule on other important issues likely to reach the Federal courts. I only know that I want judges on those courts who will defend the rights of the poor and the disenfranchised in our country. She believes Janice Rogers Brown is one of those jurists. I am not sure whether she is right or wrong. But I do know Janice Rogers Brown deserves the opportunity to have her nomination voted on. And if one use of the filibuster has been to prevent Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown and others like them from getting this vote, a time-honored procedure of the Senate can be used with equal justification to see to it that the filibuster gets tweaked a little bit to make sure we go back to the practice that existed here for decades. For that reason, I will support the motion of the majority leader if it becomes necessary to make sure that we have an opportunity to a vote on Priscilla Owen. I hope as a result of this debate, our friends on the Democratic side of the aisle will step back a little from their position of saying no to a vote on Priscilla Owen and allow us to have a vote. If they do, they are acting in accordance with the history of the Senate for past decades, the history of the Senate going back so far that even Patrick Leahy cannot remember an exception to it. If they do and we have an up-or-down vote on Priscilla Owen, it may well be that all of this talk about changing the rules will go away.…”