Pete Sessions: “I want to thank Senator McCain, because I remember very vividly Senator McCain was part of a group of 14 Senators who…”

“I want to thank Senator McCain, because I remember very vividly Senator McCain was part of a group of 14 Senators who avoided this kind of occurrence. In 2005, I guess it was, right after President Bush took office, a group of Senators, really the entire Democratic Conference, went into a retreat, as reported by the New York Times. I think Senator Schumer was the organizer of it, but the whole conference attended. Cass Sunstein, Laurence Tribe, Marcia Greenberger were their experts. They discussed what to do about President Bush's new election and his ability to appoint judges. They announced they were changing the ground rules of confirmation, and for the first time immediately thereafter the Bush nominees were filibustered systematically. He nominated a Mr. Gregory who had been nominated by President Clinton and not confirmed. President Bush renominated him in a bipartisan act. He was promptly confirmed. But I believe the very next 10 nominees were all filibustered, every one of them. We had never seen a real filibuster of any judges at that time. But they were changing the ground rules to commit systematic filibusters. They filibustered virtually the first 10 judges President Bush nominated. It went on for weeks and months. We brought up nominees every way we could. These were some fabulous nominees, Supreme Court Justices, people with high academic records. But they were all blocked. It was something we had never seen before in the Senate.…”