Word: frist
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...what appears to have been a verbal blunder, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said in a speech at Harvard Medical School (HMS) today that South Korea currently possesses nuclear weapons and is developing a long-range missile program...
...Senate is a chamber split in two--two parties, two ideologies and, at times last week, two different centuries. There was majority leader Bill Frist accusing the Democrats of trying "to kill, to defeat, to assassinate" President Bush's judicial nominees, and Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania comparing the Democrats' audacity to Hitler's--a charge so harsh he later had to apologize. To show what he thought of Frist, New Jersey's Frank Lautenberg carted in a poster of actor Ian McDiarmid playing the diabolical Supreme Chancellor Palpatine of Star Wars: Episode III--Revenge of the Sith...
What both men were trying to avoid was a vote, engineered by Frist and set for this week, that would change Senate procedures to make it impossible for Democrats to continue blocking Bush's judicial appointments by talking them to death. The Democrats have been winning by filibuster--which requires 60 votes to overcome--what they cannot accomplish on a simple up-or-down vote, since Republicans have 55 Senate seats to their 44. Neutralizing the filibuster may sound like little more than a bit of parliamentary housekeeping, but, given the tactic's long tradition in the Senate, Mississippi Senator...
...been here 27 years," he said. "I have the greatest respect for this institution and how it's served this country all these years." Democratic leader Harry Reid said he had heard private misgivings about the wisdom of changing Senate tradition even from Republicans who publicly pledged to support Frist on the vote...
...Senate for all the nominees, which would almost certainly guarantee their confirmation. That position is making it very difficult for the two parties to achieve a face-saving compromise. Unless Democrats agree to allow floor votes on all the White House's nominees, Senate majority leader Bill Frist has threatened to use the Republican majority to prohibit judicial filibusters...