Harry Reid is not a very good liar

CNSNews, regarding Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's response to President Bush's resubmission of 20 judicial nominees yesterday:

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had some "interesting, if inaccurate" things to say about President Bush's judicial nominees on Tuesday, a Republican Senate staffer said.

In an exchange with reporters, Reid was asked whether Democrats have decided to oppose the men and women President Bush re-nominated for federal judgeships on Monday.

"Re-nomination is not the key," Reid responded. "I think the question is those judges that have already been turned down in the Senate. And unless there's something that is new that I'm not aware of with each of these men and women, we will vote the same way we did in the past."

But Reid is wrong, said Don Stewart, the communications director for Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.).

"None of President Bush's judicial nominees has 'been turned down in the Senate,'" Stewart noted. "The nominees Reid referred to were denied a vote altogether -- despite the fact that they all had (and have) bipartisan majority support."

Sen. Cornyn and other Republicans have said that all Bush's nominees would be confirmed -- if Democrats would just allow an up-or-down vote by the full Senate.

"It's a little difficult to 'turn down' a nominee if he or she never gets an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor," Stewart said in a press release.