Please sign emergency petition to save our courts

I just signed MoveOn PAC's emergency petition to stop the "nuclear option" - the far right wing's plan to seize absolute power to stack our courts -– and I hope you will sign too.

Starting today the petition is being delivered straight to Congress every three hours until the final vote, and many of our comments will be read aloud on the Senate floor.

Please sign right now at: http://www.moveonpac.org/nuclear

Why is this an emergency? Tomorrow (Tue, 24 May 2005) the Senate will vote on Republican Leader Bill Frist's "nuclear option" to break the rules of the Senate and give the Republican Party absolute control over appointing federal judges.

For 200 years the minority's right to filibuster has kept our courts fair, by making sure that federal judges needed to get at least some support from both sides of the aisle before they were given life time appointments.

If Frist eliminates the filibuster, his next step will be to force far right partisan judges onto the powerful U.S. Courts of Appeals. The real targets, however, are the four seats on the Supreme Court likely to become vacant in the next four years.

With that much power on the Supreme Court, the far right could strike down decades of progress on labor rights, environmental protections, reproductive rights, and privacy.

The "nuclear option" will live or die by a final vote, probably on Tuesday, and the vote is still way too close to call. There are at least 6 moderate Republicans still on the fence and only 3 more votes needed to win. If we can get enough of our voices into congress and into the streets in the next  hours, we can still save our courts.

Please take a minute to join me and sign the emergency petition today.

Comments

[Dr. Lavine]

Already signed it. Unfortunately, Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR) announced last week he is supporting the Republican majority on this. Maybe the current rumors of Republican nervousness that they don't have 50 votes are well-founded, and that Smith will have the courage to break with them (as he did on ANWAR drilling). Tomorrow could turn out to be a watershed day in US history, and I hate watershed days if they don't go my way.