Mitch McConell Filibuster Fibs Unfettered on FOX
Reported by Ellen - May 1, 2005
Another day, another Republican allowed to misstate the truth about the filibuster on FOX News. Unfortunately, it's becoming the norm rather than the exception.
Last night, it was Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell on After Hours with Cal Thomas. He said, "It's to (Democrats') advantage, too, to get the senate back to the way it operated for 214 years without any great problems with regard to judicial nominees.... It was never filibustered in the history of the senate until two years ago."
McConnell went on to talk about how the filibuster was not used against Clarence Thomas or Robert Bork. McConnell added, "This is an innovation of the last congress."
Once again FOX News let stand an outright untruth. As written in the U.S. Senate's own website, the nomination of Abe Fortas "sparked the first filibuster in Senate history on a Supreme Court nomination." That was a Republican filibuster by the way. Also forgotten by FOX News are all the obstructions made by Republicans over Clinton judicial nominees.
We have pointed out the fallaciousness of these claims numerous times on our blog. See, for example, my posts on 4/29/05 and 4/28/05 and Deborah's post on 4/25/05. Nevertheless, FOX News keeps on allowing these misstatements to continue and, even worse, at least one of their hosts says them, too.
