Orrin Hatch: “in Lewis Carroll's book ``Through the Looking Glass,'' Humpty Dumpty has a famous exchange with Alice in which he says…”

“in Lewis Carroll's book ``Through the Looking Glass,'' Humpty Dumpty has a famous exchange with Alice in which he says: When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean-- neither more nor less. Many partisans in the debate over judicial nominations or appointments in the Senate and among interest groups, particularly, have the same attitude. Let me offer two examples. One is, they play games with the word ``filibuster.'' The current filibusters against judicial nominations have four features: First, they involve defeating attempts to end debate such as defeating a motion to invoke cloture under rule XXII; second, they target nominations with clear bipartisan majority support that would be approved if there were a confirmation vote; three, they are not about debating these nominations but about defeating them; and fourth, these filibusters are completely partisan, organized, and driven by party leaders. For 2 years, Democrats have claimed these filibusters are nothing new, that they happened before the 108th Congress. Last Friday, the distinguished assistant minority leader Senator Durbin offered his evidence. He printed in the Record a document titled ``History of Filibusters and Judges.'' It was a list of 12 judicial nominations which it said ``needed 60 (or more) votes--cloture--in order to end a filibuster.'' Yet these are filibusters only if, as Humpty Dumpty put it, the word filibuster means whatever you choose it to mean.…”