The Good the Bad and the Ugly

As usual, it's been a full week in the world of politics and current events. Here are my thoughts on three stories that I found interesting.

The Good
On Monday (May 9th) General Electric announced it's new environmental initiative entitled "Ecomagination" According to the Washington Post:
GE is the biggest addition to a growing list of corporations seeking to be seen as "green," and one of only a few business titans to call for broad action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that many scientists say lead to global warming.

They are looking into wind power, hybrid technology, and simply more efficient technology. A lot of their customers are European. So, I've heard it argued that one of the reasons for this change is to satisfy the more environment friendly European customers. Is the whole thing lip service? Only time will tell. But regardless, it's good lip service, and shows private industry is going in the right direction. Maybe our pro-business government will follow.

The Bad
The "Emergency" spending bill recently passed in Congress is an awful example of how to pass laws. Here's the basic idea:
You come up with some cause that requires large sums of money quickly and that would be a huge political cost to argue against. In this case it's the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then, you slip some other contentious items in the bill that wouldn't be passed without huge debate: in this case, some really controversial Immigration reform (reform used very loosely). Since debate is limited, and the political costs of voting against the money are so high, these bills get passed without debate. Disgusting!
If immigration reform is necessary, which it is, then you debate it and pass bills the normal way. Not by bypassing the legislative process.

The Ugly
The debate over Senate filibusters is really going to get ugly.
It looks like the showdown is going to begin next week. The president resubmits his 10 controversial judge nominations. The Democrats threaten to filibuster. The Republicans change the rules forcing an up or down vote on the nominations. All hell breaks loose.
Neither side really has the moral high ground. The democrats have often decried the filibuster when they were in the majority. The Republicans have used plenty of legislative tricks to block Clinton nominees, even if they didn't filibuster. They've also attempted to filibuster before. One, a Johnson nominee, was withdrawn before the filibuster was necessary. Other Republican filibuster attempts have been brought to a vote with help from other Republicans.
So what should happen? Well, from what I've read, I don't agree with
a lot of what these judges have to see. I'm not particularly qualified to judge their competency as a judge. The question is, how much leeway does Congress have over the president's nominees?
My solution: let the voters decide. Let the Democrats filibuster the nominees. If the voters think the Dem's went to far, they will make sure that there are not enough of them in the next Senate to do it again. If the voters agree that these nominees were "outside of the mainstream", then there will probably be enough Dems to force the President to choose more moderate judges next time.