An e-mailer points out:
Yesterday – – Wednesday – – the Senate voted on what will turn out to be the critical amendment in its class action reform debate. It was an amendment by Senators Feinstein and Bingaman that would have gutted the bill and which would have eliminated the long negotiated “clean” Senate bill that the House of Represnetatives could accept without having to send the bill back to the Senate.
One, one, Republican voted with the bill’s opponents. Was it the almost always against legal reform Richard Shelby? — no. The one Republican was the new Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Arlen Specter.
Just what does this say about so many future legislative issues and the judicial confirmation process? It could get very ugly.