What a difference eight years and a Senate majority makes. Back in 2005, Senate Democrats (including Barack Obama) were in the minority—and dead-set against a Republican plan to allow judicial nominations to proceed to an up-or-down vote based on a simple majority. The so-called nuclear option, warned Obama and others, would have the Founders spinning in their graves and usher in a tyranny of the majority in the world's greatest deliberative body.
But now, faced with a truculent Republican Senate minority, the Democrats done just that, effectively overturning 200 years of precedent. For more on what it all means, read http://reason.com/blog/2013/11/21/senate-democrats-go-nuclear-vote-down-pa
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