Top Republican leaders on Capitol Hill are about to wage an unprecedented war on a critically important part of our democracy: the right to filibuster and defeat extremist federal judicial nominees.

We have to act now to stop this win-at-all-costs attack on democracy and our right to challenge dangerous judicial nominees. Please take a moment now to contact your senators and tell them to preserve the right to filibuster judicial nominees.

www.unionvoice.org/campaign/StopNuclear

The Republican plan to deny the right to filibuster their candidates for federal judgeships is so explosive it’s being called “the nuclear option.” They are embarking on an end-run around democracy, Senate rules and 200 years of Senate tradition. And if they win, President George W. Bush and Senate Republicans will have unchecked power to pack our federal courts with extremist nominees—people like:

• Janice Rogers Brown, who calls Social Security “cannibalization” by senior citizens.
   
• Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen, whose record shows she is plain hostile to the interests of working people.
   
• William Myers, whose attacks on environmental laws and sacred lands have earned unprecedented opposition from environmentalists, American Indians and others.
   
• Terrence Boyle, who has been reversed more than 150 times and whose civil rights decisions are extremely problematic.

These are not the kinds of people we want making decisions that shape the rights of working families. Please act now to preserve democracy and the ability to challenge and stop extremist nominees to federal courts. Click this link:
 

www.unionvoice.org/campaign/StopNuclear

Senators always have been able to challenge judicial nominees by using the filibuster. But Republican senators want to change that now so they can rubber-stamp President Bush’s extremist nominees to federal courts. They accuse Democrats of standing in the way of filling court vacancies—but here’s what they don’t want you to know: Democrats have blocked only 10 of President Bush’s judicial nominees with a filibuster—and those nominees were real gems with troubling records and questionable credentials. Republicans, in contrast, used various tactics to block more than 60 of President Clinton’s judicial nominees.

We need to tell our senators the filibuster is not the problem—attempts by the White House and its Senate allies to pack the federal courts with anti-worker, anti-rights judges are the problem. Please click the following link to take action:

www.unionvoice.org/campaign/StopNuclear

Once you have contacted your senators, please click the following link to urge others you know who are concerned about our rights to send their senators a message, too:

www.unionvoice.org/campaign/StopNuclear/forward

Thank you for taking action today for working families.

In solidarity,

Working Families e-Activist Network, AFL-CIO
April 11, 2005