Jeremy Peters reports in the New York Times that “Senate Democrats are on the verge of moving to eliminate the use of the filibuster against most presidential nominees.” This would be for cabinet posts and the federal judiciary, I understand. The filibuster could still be used for Supreme Court nominees and other legislation.

The problem, as Democrats see it, is that Republicans have effectively rewritten Senate rules to create a supermajority requirement for confirming presidential nominees. Filibustering cabinet-level officials, once extremely rare, is now routine.

While Democrats filibustered their share of judicial nominees when they were in the minority under President George W. Bush, including people named to the powerful District of Columbia appeals court, what Republicans say they intend to accomplish goes beyond simply blocking a vote. Their goal is to reshape the nation’s most powerful appeals court by shrinking it to just eight full-time judges. By law it has 11 judges who regularly hear cases.

Democrats said that was a step too far. The court is split with four judges appointed by Democrats and four by Republicans. But among the six semiretired judges who still hear cases, five are seen as conservative, one as liberal.

Ryan Grim writes for the Hufington Post,

It’s still not clear if Reid has the 51 votes to make the change, but it certainly looks close. There are 55 Democrats in total, which means Reid can lose up to four. HuffPost tracked down a number of Democrats on Tuesday to see who remains opposed to making the change, and only one, Levin, definitively said no. A couple of others, Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), avoided the question.

See also Gail Collins:

“If the Democrats proceed to use this nuclear option in this way, it will be Obamacare II,” cried Senator Lamar Alexander on Wednesday. This was in keeping with a brand-new Congressional tradition under which Republicans making remarks on the floor of the House or Senate are required to mention the Affordable Care Act at least once every 35 seconds. …

… Since the nominees were two women and a black man, Democrats have strongly suggested — well, you know.

“When the other side gets desperate, they turn to their last line of defense: accuse us Republicans of bias,” said Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa during a brief and rather desultory debate.

Yes, and when the Republicans get desperate they … wait for it.

“There is no crisis in the D.C. Circuit because they don’t have enough work to do as it is,” said Grassley. “There is a crisis occurring now all across the country as a result of the health care reform bill that often goes by the terminology of Obamacare.”

Honestly, it’s a wonder they make it through the opening prayer.

Grassley argued that reducing the size of the DC court by three judges would save the country $3 million a year. Whether a DC circuit court judge really costs the country a million a year is unclear, but Collins says $3 million is still a lot less than the $50 million Grassley once wanted to build an indoor rain forest near Des Moines.

GOP senators have blocked the nominations of three judges to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The senators didn’t even pretend to argue that the nominees (an African-American man and two women, btw) were not qualified. No, they argued that (1) the court doesn’t need 11 judges and can make do with three less; and (2) the court is balanced between Republican and Democratic nominees, and three Democratic nominees would throw it out of balance..

As to the first claim, we’re talking about the nation’s second-highest court, which handles cases involving federal regulations and national security. Complicated stuff. Eleven judges don’t seem too many to me. As to the second claim, Media Matters says that isn’t entirely true. And, anyway, Barack Obama won the 2012 election.

Harry Reid is once again threatening to “go nuclear” and change filibuster rules. But will he really do it this time, or wimp out again? Word is that some Dem senators who were cool to the idea in the past, e.g., Diane Feinstein, are frustrated enough to have changed their minds.

Changing the filibuster rules is not without risk, if you consider a future hypothetical right-wing Congress. And Brian Beutler thinks the Republicans want the Dems to at least try to change the filibuster rules for that very reason. Right now they think they can take back the Senate in 2014, and “Getting Democratic fingerprints on the nuclear rule-change precedent, will provide Republicans the cover they’ll need to eliminate the filibuster altogether in January 2015.”

But, as Charles Pierce says,

It’s time, Harry. Really, it is. I was on the other side of this issue for a very long time because I didn’t want to confront the possibility of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell with the unlimited power to do anything that President Scott Walker wanted. That kind of thing still gives me pause. But this business with the judges has long passed over the International Fk You Line.

Yeah, pretty much.

Here’s what the judge did to poor GZ:

Bail for George Zimmerman, charged with felony aggravated assault and two misdemeanors on allegations that he pointed a shotgun at his girlfriend in Florida, was set Tuesday afternoon at $9,000 during Zimmerman’s first court appearance.

A Seminole County judge put conditions on Zimmerman’s bail: That he cannot return to two Florida addresses; he cannot have contact with the accuser; he cannot possess weapons; he must wear a monitoring device; and he cannot travel outside Florida.

The judge initially said Zimmerman could return to one of the banned addresses with law enforcement to retrieve his belongings, but later — at the urging of the prosecutor — reversed that allowance, saying a third party could get the belongings instead.

Also, too:

Bail would normally be around $5,000 on the charges against Zimmerman, but the judge said he was increasing it to $9,000 after the state’s attorney informed the court that Scheibe had disclosed an alleged incident a week and a half ago in which Zimmerman purportedly tried to choke her. The girlfriend decided not to report it to police, the state’s attorney said.

See also Joan Walsh:

I would hate to be a former Zimmerman juror today. I’d also hate to be Sean Hannity, but that’s true every day.

Nice.

Pathetic waste of human protoplasm George Zimmerman was arrested again yesterday, and right now he’s sitting in a Seminole County jail cell. This afternoon a judge will decide if he can be released on bail.

Of course, right now it’s a he said, she said story, but the elements of the story that seem fairly indisputable are that Zimmerman shoved his girlfriend out of her home, barricaded the door, and smashed up a bunch of her furniture. He then called 911 and whined to the operator that nobody understands him.

She said he pointed a gun at her, he says he didn’t. He says that she asked him to leave, and that he was perfectly happy to do so, but then she went crazy and began smashing her own furniture and stealing his stuff, so he was forced to shove her out of her home and barricade the door. He denies he pulled out his shotgun at any time.

She says she asked him to leave, and that he lost his temper and began breaking furniture. She says he pointed a shotgun on her. She says he broke a glass coffee table with the butt of the shotgun.

He said she asked him to leave because she is pregnant and wants to raise the child alone. She says she isn’t pregnant.

GZ’s 911 call is an exercise in dissembling. Highlights: When the operator understood that police had already been called and were outside wanting to talk to him, she asked (with a hint of irritation in her voice) why he had called 911 if the police already were there. He complained to the operator that he called because he wanted people to know the truth, but then he didn’t want to talk to the police who were already there because “I don’t have anything to say.”

Even better: The geniuses commenting at the racist hate site Weasel Zippers have decided that this arrest is a ruse to distract people from Obamacare. For example:

This has A$$older’s and the Department of Just Us’ fingerprints all over it. Seeing as Obama is getting pummled in the media and Dem’s are running away from ObastardCare, time for a little distraction away from the truth. Presto Chang-o, let’s trump up some race based charges against a white guy.

” Monday and when they responded to the home three minutes later,”…really? Tell me how often the police show up in three minutes? Sounds like they were waiting for the call…

So, apparently, Zimmerman’s GF was paid by the Obama administration to file false charges against poor old GZ. No doubt she threw herself out of her home and barricaded the door behind her using magic power. No, wait, the furniture used to barricade the door was rigged to pile up against the door using some remote control device provided by Eric Holder. That’s it.

I’m feeling a tad under the weather, so here’s some stuff to tide you over.

And what do the phrases “under the weather” and “tide you over” really mean? They make no sense.

Well, anyhoo — couple of big anniversaries this week. Tomorrow is the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. That’s seven score and ten years ago if you want to be formal about it.

And, of course, Friday is the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination. Get ready for a Kennedy Assassination Truther Festival.

A couple of articles — see “America’s angriest white men: Up close with racism, rage and Southern supremacy” by Michael Kimmel. It’s mostly what you all already know, but the author makes one point that is intriguing —

In the United States, class is often a proxy for race. When politicians speak of the “urban poor,” we know it’s a code for black people. When they talk about “welfare queens,” we know the race of that woman driving the late-model Cadillac. In polite society, racism remains hidden behind a screen spelled CLASS.

On the extreme Right, by contrast, race is a proxy for class. Among the white supremacists, when they speak of race consciousness, defending white people, protesting for equal rights for white people, they actually don’t mean all white people. They don’t mean Wall Street bankers and lawyers, though they are pretty much entirely white and male. They don’t mean white male doctors, or lawyers, or architects, or even engineers. They don’t mean the legions of young white hipster guys, or computer geeks flocking to the Silicon Valley, or the legions of white preppies in their boat shoes and seersucker jackets “interning” at white-shoe law firms in major cities. Not at all. They mean middle-and working-class white people. Race consciousness is actually class consciousness without actually having to “see” class. “Race blindness” leads working-class people to turn right; if they did see class, they’d turn left and make common cause with different races in the same economic class.

Finally, see “How We Got Obamacare to Work.” In short, states have shown us that the ACA works just fine if right-wing nutjobs just get out of the way and let it work.

Much sturm und drang today over the President’s decision to allow people to keep their cancelled health plans for another year. I’ve been busy with other things and am just now catching up with this, and from what I am reading it’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Brian Beutler explains,

If your health insurance carrier has canceled your plan in anticipation of the launch of the Affordable Care Act, the administrative fix President Obama announced Thursday doesn’t guarantee you can get it back.

But setting aside logistical hurdles, it loosens regulations to allow insurance companies to reinstate the plans for another year, if they so choose — and if they first fully apprise you of your other options, including expanded benefits and the potential availability of premium support, on the exchanges.

This solution combines a clever P.R. stunt, a stalling tactic, an act of retribution, the genuine possibility of transition assistance for some, and a large political and substantive gamble. It bears the hallmarks of desperation and frustration and determination, but it just might work.

The idea isn’t to retroactively fulfill the promise he made to everyone whose plans have been canceled, but to demonstrate to the public that there’s now nothing in the law requiring carriers to dump policyholders or uphold their cancellation notices, so that the public takes its concerns and grievances directly to the carriers. That would alleviate pressure on Democratic lawmakers to vote under duress for legislation that would undermine the Affordable Care Act more dramatically.

Insurers are throwing a fit:

The health insurance industry is already attacking a White House fix to Obamacare on Thursday even before the plan is formally announced by the president.

“This doesn’t change anything other than force insurers to be the political flack jackets for the administration,” said an industry insider. “So now when we don’t offer these policies the White House can say it’s the insurers doing this and not being flexible.”

Yes, exactly. And they have only themselves to blame. Back to Brian Beutler:

But setting aside the merits, Obama’s remedy is a justified comeuppance for carriers who defaulted beneficiaries into obscenely expensive plans, which they characterized as “comparable” to the canceled coverage, without apprising them of their options, and blamed the whole disruption on Obamacare. It’s a scolding reminder to particular insurance companies that their lack of integrity exacerbated a problem that might have been contained if they hadn’t acted with such avarice. They are now reaping the whirlwind.

As I understand it, there were two proposals for “fixing” Obamacare in circulation in Congress. Ezra Klein:

The Republican Party’s play is Fred Upton’s “Keep Your Health Plan Act.” The law is poorly named: It doesn’t actually guarantee that you can keep your health care. Instead, it allows insurers to keep offering their current plans and also allows them to offer new plans that aren’t ACA compliant.

At a slim 235 words, Upton’s bill is a master class in the pitfalls of soundbite legislation. It manages to fail to solve the problem it’s actually aimed at while creating a new political problem — this time, for Republicans.

The bill gives insurers the option of renewing their cancelled plans — but, crucially, it doesn’t require them to do so. Few insurers want to renew those plans, as they don’t expect them to be profitable in a post-Obamacare world. So Upton’s bill doesn’t mean people can keep their current health insurance, but it means they can begin (wrongly) blaming their health insurer rather than the Obama administration for the cancellation of that insurance.

Meanwhile, Upton’s bill has a secondary provision allowing insurers to offer new plans in 2014 that don’t comply with the Affordable Care Act’s consumer protections. So if an insurer wants to continue turning people away for being sick, they can go right ahead. If they want to offer shoddy coverage that’ll evaporate the moment a health crisis strikes, that’s their prerogative. The result is that Upton guts the law’s extremely popular insurance regulations. “A vote for the Upton bill, in short, is a vote for everything Americans say they hate about their health-care system,” Jon Cohn writes .

The other plan already out there is Sen. Mary Landrieu’s. This plan would compel insurers to keep the old substandard plans going for those already enrolled, but would not allow them to sell new policies from those plans. And the insurers would have to send annual renewal notices explaining why the plans are crappy. Landrieu suggests that people would want to ditch the old policies once they know they have other options. I think the President’s idea may be the better one, though.

On the House agenda this week, along with the utterly predictable Keep Your Health Plan Act, is another bill that might be called the Screw the Little Guy Act.

I wrote about this bill last May, and via a blog called The Pop Tort I see that it could be voted on this week. This is H.R.982, called the Furthering Asbestos Claim Transparency (FACT) Act of 2013. Here’s some background from my earlier post —

As asbestos manufacturers faced lawsuits from sick and dying workers, many went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy to protect their assets. Some of these manufacturers were required to set up asbestos personal injury trusts, which were responsible for compensating present and future claimants. The FACT Act of 2013 would require these trusts to disclose much personal information about the claimants, a requirement that seems to have little purpose except to dissuade people from filing claims. (According to the General Accounting Office, personal information about individual claimants may be obtained today with the permission of the claimants or in response to a legitimate subpoena, but otherwise the privacy of claimants is respected.)

Or, as the Pop Tort blogger explained, the bill does two things:

1) it requires asbestos trusts to disclose on a public web site private, confidential information about every asbestos claimant and their families, including their names, addresses, where they work, how much they make, some medical information, how much they received in compensation and the last four digits of their social security numbers; and 2) it allows any defendant in any asbestos lawsuit the right to demand any information about any asbestos victim from any asbestos trust at any time for any reason.

The New York Times editorial board said in June,

The Republican bill, known as the Furthering Asbestos Claim Transparency Act (FACT) of 2013, would allow asbestos companies to demand information from the trusts for virtually any reason, forcing the trusts to devote limited resources to responding to fishing expeditions that will slow the process of paying claims.

The bill would also increase the burden on claimants to supply information. But it puts virtually no burdens on asbestos companies, like disclosing the settlements they have reached with plaintiffs or requiring them to reveal where their products were used and when, so that workers know which companies or trusts might be liable for their injuries.

So, yeah, the only purpose of this bill is to intimidate sick people, or their survivors, from filing claims, and if they do file claims to be sure they get as little as possible as late as possible.

I know it’s an article of faith among a lot of these bozos Republican legislators that people file claims who aren’t even sick. But if that were the case, it ought to be fairly easy to stipulate that claimants provide a diagnosis of mesothelioma or other asbestos-related disease from a qualified medical provider. Oh, wait; the law already on the books does that. Never mind.

The Asbestos Cancer Victims’ Rights Campaign has an online petition to stop the FACT Act.

Start all the rumors you want. I’m sure they will be more interesting than what I was actually doing.

OK, so the world hasn’t changed much since Friday. Just some notes —

Second Amendment zealots are a threat to our freedom.

On Saturday, nearly 40 armed men, women, and children waited outside a Dallas, Texas area restaurant to protest a membership meeting for the state chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a gun safety advocacy group formed in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

According to a spokeswoman for Moms Demand Action (MDA), the moms were inside the Blue Mesa Grill when members of Open Carry Texas (OCT) — an open carry advocacy group — “pull[ed] up in the parking lot and start[ed] getting guns out of their trunks.” The group then waited in the parking lot for the four MDA members to come out. The spokeswoman said that the restaurant manager did not want to call 911, for fear of “inciting a riot” and waited for the gun advocates to leave. The group moved to a nearby Hooters after approximately two hours.

MDA later released a statement calling OCT “gun bullies” who “disagree[d] with our goal of changing America’s gun laws and policies to protect our children and families.” The statement added that the members and restaurant customers were “terrified by what appeared to be an armed ambush.” A member of OCT responded by tweeting, “I guess I’m a #gunbullies #Comeandtakeit.”

In most civilized parts of the world, behavior like this would not stand. If these thugs are allowed to get away with this, the day could come when no advocacy group of any sort dare meet anywhere.

See also “Hillary’s Nightmare? A Democratic Party That Realizes Its Soul Lies With Elizabeth Warren” by Noam Scheiber. I don’t know if Elizabeth Warren would be more electable than Hillary Clinton in 2016, but I agree very much with the larger point — most Democrats, especially younger ones, have moved past the Clintons and long for a rebirth of genuine economic populism and progressivism.