They should have stood up for the principle that simple-majority votes should determine confirmation of executive appointments, not a 60-vote threshold that gives minority parties a veto over a president's team and that was unintended by the Constitution.
The number of filibusters shot up in the eighties and continued to rise in the following decades, as the parties kept alternating control of the Senate and escalating a procedural arms race, routinely blocking the confirmation of executive and judicial appointees.
I recently participated in a panel convened by Esquire Magazine, in which they asked four retired members of congress –Senators Lott and Daschle, Congressman Livingston, and me – to make recommendations about how to improve the function of Congress, including syncing up the House and Senate's schedules, eliminating gerrymandering and speeding up the confirmations of executive appointees.
UPDATE: Senate Democrats voted to invoke the so-called nuclear option just after noon on Thursday, changing the rules so that only a simple majority vote is required for confirmation of all executive and most judicial nominees.
"This movie redefines the stratosphere of international box-office potential," said Jason E. Squire, a film business professor at USC. "It's a confirmation of what executives have been saying for years, which is that the local market is basically mature, and the real profitability growth is overseas".
Our study contributes to a better understanding of the impaired cognitive processes that are unique to autism and warrants confirmation using other models of executive functions.
"How do you like that?" Reid's comments came shortly after Republicans told him they would object to the confirmation of nearly 70 noncontroversial executive branch nominees that Democrats planned to bring up for a vote.
On the heels of the confirmation of new Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt, Trump is now expected to take executive action this week to undo the EPA's Clean Water Rule.
Add to that a string of controversial Cabinet confirmations and an ever-growing list of executive actions — on issues including the Affordable Care Act, the "global gag rule" on abortion, the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipeline projects, the Mexican border wall, and the grotesque Muslim ban — and it's hard not to be sickened by it all.
However, upon confirmation of its 13th series, an executive producer commented that The X Factor had a "finite lifespan".
BBC executives hope confirmation of the move will help to dampen unrest at the corporation among staff who are furious about the pension proposals.
