More Judicial Thoughts

Priscilla Owen was confirmed, a day later than I expected. The cloture vote on Tuesday was unexpectedly lopsided, 81-18. Apparently, a goodly amount of Democrats decided to give up on trying to obstruct, since they knew they wouldn't succeed. In fact, the vote was even more lopsided, but then several changed their votes from yeas to nays -- apparently because it would look bad to have filibustered for all this time and then have everyone give up on it. The final vote for confirmation was 56-43 (apparently "present, giving live pair" -- whatever that means -- counts as a yea). The oddest thing about that is that Robert Byrd (D-WV) and Mary Landrieu (D-LA) both voted to confirm -- after working to filibuster her. That makes absolutely zero sense. Ben Nelson (D-NE) was a surprise voting no, as he was a democrat opposing the filibuster and had seemed to indicate he would vote for at least most of Bush's nominees. Chafee (R-RI) also voted no, which isn't completely shocking, but certainly disappointing. When I saw the vote total, I had presumed those four had voted the opposite of the way they did. Daniel Inouye (D-HI), one of the parties to the deal, did not participate in either vote for reasons I have not seen.

Update: Alright, I figured out what was up with the Ted Stevens (R-AK) vote. He had voted yea, then went back and had it changed to "present" because he remembered that he made an agreement with Daniel Inouye that since he wouldn't be there to vote nay, Stevens also wouldn't vote, as their votes would cancel out were both in attendence. This is an old Senate custom (I'm not sure that they commonly vote "present" though). I'd heard of the custom before, but seeing it designated "present, giving live pair" was new to me. Goes to show that it's always possible to learn new stuff, especially when it comes to odd Senate practices.