Filibuster Precedent? Democrats Point to '68 and Fortas (washingtonpost.com)

Filibuster Precedent? Democrats Point to '68 and Fortas (washingtonpost.com):

"The GOP claim, asserted in speeches, articles and interviews, is that filibusters against judicial nominees are unprecedented.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) told his panel this month that the judicial battles have escalated, 'with the filibuster being employed for the first time in the history of the Republic.' Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) said in a Senate speech last week, 'The crisis created by the unprecedented use of filibusters to defeat judicial nominations must be solved.'

Such claims, however, are at odds with the record of the successful 1968 GOP-led filibuster against President Lyndon B. Johnson's nomination of Abe Fortas to be chief justice of the United States. 'Fortas Debate Opens with a Filibuster,' a Page One Washington Post story declared on Sept. 26, 1968. It said, 'A full-dress Republican-led filibuster broke out in the Senate yesterday against a motion to call up the nomination of Justice Abe Fortas for Chief Justice.'"