firedoglake Archive Site

The Filibuster Fight is Go

From Democrats.com:

The last two days have been amazing.

Early Thursday afternoon, we broke the news that Senator John Kerry would lead a filibuster against Judge Sam Alito if he could get 41 Senators to sustain the filibuster. Three hours later, CNN confirmed our story.

Naturally, the White House freaked out and told Senator Bill Frist to schedule a cloture vote as quickly as possible - Monday at 4:30 p.m. - to prevent Democrats from uniting behind Kerry.

Then the White House called its media whores at the NY Times (David Kirkpatrick), AP (Jesse Holland), Pentagon Post (Charles Babington), CNN (Miles O'Brien), and MSNBC (Chris Matthews) and told them to trash John Kerry for daring to challenge the will of Emperor Bush, and to repeat over and over that Democrats did not have enough votes to stop Alito.

But even as Karl Rove was doing his dirty work, progressive activists like you were calling your Senators urging them to support John Kerry's filibuster.

And one by one, Democratic Senators began to turn around.

And from Sean-Paul Kelly:

Just got off the phone with someone highly placed in the filibuster fight: this is doable. It is an uphill battle, no doubt, but that person's words were: the momentum is shifting and has shifted perceptibly since Thursday. Senators are responding to the fact that this is the right thing to do, for the good of the country. This stuff is real. But they are also responding to Atrios' storyline:

The Democrats shocked Washington today by holding together, dropping a mighty turd in the punchbowl of the Bush administration, dealing a deadly blow to his nomination of Alito. The president won't be too happy tonight as he gives the 2006 state of the union speech.

The pressure, the phone calls, the emails and the blogposts are working....

We can, my contact said, pull this miracle off.

Sean-Paul Barbara Mikulski is one of the most vulnerable. Here is her contact information (thanks Prof):

Senator Barbara A Mikulski [MD] DEMOCRAT SWING VOTE
Washington, 202-224-4654 (phone), 202-224-8858 (fax)
Salisbury, 410-546-7711 (phone), 410-546-9324 (fax)
Greenbelt, 301-345-5517 (phone), 301-345-7573 (fax)
Annapolis, 410-263-1805 (phone), 410-263-5949 (fax)
Hagerstown, 301-797-2826 (phone), 301-797-2241 (fax)
Baltimore, 410-962-4510 (phone), 410-962-4760 (fax)

If you have any trouble getting through anywhere, leave the info in the comments because I'll be actively adjusting the contact info as I hear about this kind of stuff. (I've heard some Senate members may be turning off their toll-free numbers and their mailboxes are full.) It looks like the filibuster Dems want to reach out to us on this one, we'll be on a conference call with them soon. I will have more, much more as quickly as I know anything. In the mean time, I'm BEGGING you to take part in this. There is nothing more important you will do this weekend, or the next, to affect quite possibly the next 30 years in this country.

The fight is on. Let's not get outflanked on this one by Bill Frist, and let's prove we know how to show up.

Update: Phone mailboxes seem to be full. You can send a free fax here and here.

Update: As Colleen military mom pointed out in the comments, when sending a fax use an address with a city and zip code from that office. You can find zip codes for any city here.

posted by Jane Hamsher @ 1/28/2006 11:33:00 AM