Cloture

WASHINGTON - Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist warned yesterday that the Republicans are determined to stop the Democratic minority from filibustering President Bush's judicial nominations. "We have a constitutional duty to give advice and consent," Frist declared shortly after his re-election to the top Senate post. "We feel, as a caucus, that we have been denied that opportunity in the last Congress for the first time in history." Frist, of Tennessee, said the Republicans have not decided whether to use their expanded majority to change the filibuster rules on judicial nominations.

WASHINGTON -- Anticipating this week's Senate debate on a constitutional amendment imposing term limits on senators and representatives, Cleta Mitchell, the former Democratic state legislator from Oklahoma who is the George Patton of the term-limits movement, proposed to Haley Barbour, Republican national chairman, concerning Bob Dole: ''He badly needs to get comfortable with this issue so he can talk about it without grimacing and explaining all the reasons...

Washington. -- George Mitchell, master of the Senate's health-care revels, spoke in a voice mingling reproach and regret. Republicans, he said, have been violating the democratic spirit by filibustering promiscuously. The next day Texas Republican Phil Gramm and Alabama Democrat Richard Shelby promised to oppose, like Horatius at the bridge, and with a filibuster if necessary, any radical expansion of government control of health care.So within the health-care debate there is a debate about the ethics of obstructing.

With the opening Wednesday of a new session of Congress, the Senate has a rare opportunity under its rules to bring sanity to its time-honored right to unfettered speech. For its first legislative day only, it can, by simple majority vote, require members to put their bodies where their mouths are if they choose to filibuster against a measure they oppose. Democratic Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico has said he intends, on the new Senate's first legislative day, to offer a rule whereby senators will no longer be able to stymie action by mere threat of a filibuster but will be required to actually hold the floor with an old-fashioned talkathon.

Washington. -- When Bob Dole, the Senate minority leader, was successfully blocking Mr. Clinton's initial $16 billion ''stimulus'' package, I kept waiting for the expressions of disgust from my colleagues. None came. The predominant reaction seemed to be ''Hey, look at the Republicans, finally getting their act together.''We here in the capital are easily bored. The ''Clinton juggernaut'' story was getting stale; the GOP revival offered a promising plot twist. Another part of the explanation is substantive: You didn't have to be a Republican to have doubts about the president's plan to spend $2.5 billion on various mayors' pet projects.

Two months after American voters made it clear they want effective government - and two years before the U.S. Senate's next opportunity to reform its broken rules - that "do nothing" chamber appears poised to fix its filibuster. In its present warped form, it permits a single, unaccountable member, without even taking the floor or speaking, to obstruct both debate and voting on critical legislation affecting 315 million Americans. That's why it's essential for Sens. Barbara Mikulski and Ben Cardin to join with as many of their colleagues as possible in support of Senate Resolution 4, which would authorize the following reforms: •require senators who filibuster to actually keep the floor and talk; •prevent filibustering a motion to proceed; •limit the number of motions needed to go to conference with the House; •cap post-cloture debate time on nominations at two hours.

WASHINGTON - Debate over Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen's future could preoccupy the Senate for days, if not longer, with Republicans and Democrats alike suggesting significant time may be devoted to the federal appellate court candidate. Senate debate on her nomination to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans began in earnest yesterday, though the real action took place off the floor. Senate Democrats and Republicans huddled separately at their weekly closed-door policy luncheons, plotting strategy and trying to divine what tactics the other side would use. The central question is whether Democrats will filibuster the Texas judge's nomination, which would force the chamber's 51 Republicans to find nine additional votes to cut off debate and vote.

The General Assembly session could end at midnight Monday in the middle of an extended debate over state funding for embryonic stem cell research, which would leave the contentious legislation to die when Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller's gavel falls. Miller said yesterday that he probably will bring the stem cell measure to the floor of the Senate for a debate in the final hours of the session. But with Republicans and other opponents promising a filibuster, it would be the last issue that the chamber considers.

WASHINGTON -- A revised Senate resolution criticizing President Bush's troop buildup in Iraq drew new support yesterday as two authors of a sterner resolution of disapproval said they would accept the compromise, fashioned by Sen. John W. Warner. Sens. Joseph R. Biden Jr., a Delaware Democrat, and Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, said they would back Warner's alternative, which declares that "the Senate disagrees with the `plan' to augment our forces by 21,500," calls on the president to consider alternatives and urges him to limit the U.S. role in countering sectarian violence.

A key senator announced his support for gay marriage legislation on Thursday, giving it enough votes to clear the upper chamber. The declaration by Sen. James C. Rosapepe came shortly after a Senate committee approved an amended version of the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act, setting up a debate in the full Senate next week. Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller said the chamber could hold a final vote on the bill within the next 10 days. If the narrow majority holds together through what is expected to be a contentious floor debate — and the possibility of amendments — the legislation would move to the House of Delegates, where supporters believe it would pass.