snip>
Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) told his panel this month that the judicial battles have escalated, "with the filibuster being employed for the first time in the history of the Republic." Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) said in a Senate speech last week, "The crisis created by the unprecedented use of filibusters to defeat judicial nominations must be solved."
Such claims, however, are at odds with the record of the successful 1968 GOP-led filibuster against President Lyndon B. Johnson's nomination of Abe Fortas to be chief justice of the United States. "Fortas Debate Opens with a Filibuster," a Page One Washington Post story declared on Sept. 26, 1968. It said, "A full-dress Republican-led filibuster broke out in the Senate yesterday against a motion to call up the nomination of Justice Abe Fortas for Chief Justice."
A New York Times story that day said Fortas's opponents "began a historic filibuster today." As the debate dragged on for four days, news accounts consistently described it as a full-blown filibuster intended to prevent Fortas's confirmation from reaching the floor, where a simple-majority vote would have decided the question. The required number of votes to halt a filibuster then was 67; filibusters can be halted now by 60 of the Senate's 100 members.
...
Some current Republican leaders -- citing comments by former senator Robert P. Griffin (R-Mich.), who led the Fortas opposition -- say the 1968 debate was not a true filibuster. But there is little in the record to support them. The Washington Post reported on Oct. 2, 1968: "In a precedent-shattering rebuff to the Administration, the Senate yesterday refused to cut off the filibuster against consideration of Abe Fortas to be Chief Justice." The Congressional Quarterly Almanac reported in 1968: "The effort to block the confirmation by means of a filibuster was without precedent in the history of the Senate." The Senate Web site's account of the episode is headlined "Filibuster Derails Supreme Court Appointment."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45149-2005Mar17.html?nav=rss_politicsWhat's this? A US paper calling the GOP liars?