WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid accused President Bush Thursday of trying to "rewrite the Constitution and reinvent reality" in a drive to weaken Senate filibuster rules and install out-of-the-mainstream conservatives on the federal bench.
But the Senate's second-ranking Republican accused Democrats of "unprecedented obstruction" that prevented confirmation votes and upended more than two centuries of tradition.
Reid and Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., made their comments on the second day of debate over Bush's stalled nominees and venerable filibuster rules as centrists struggled unsuccessfully for a compromise that could avert a showdown. "I don't know whether we're going to have it in the next hour or not at all, but you have to keep working," said Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., emerging from the closed-door session.
Both parties used staged events off the Senate floor to push racial politics to the forefront.
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Restricting the ability of Democrats to block final votes on several of Bush's most controversial nominees "would be particularly offensive to people of color," members of the Congressional Black Caucus wrote Majority Leader Bill Frist during the day. "All of the major legislation that today bars racial discrimination in voting, employment and housing was passed after filibusters" were broken, it said.
For his part, Frist, R-Tenn., arranged to attend a mid-afternoon news conference with an organization of black pastors. The group favors a yes-or-no vote on Janice Rogers Brown, an African-American member of the California Supreme Court. Bush has named her to the federal appeals court, and Democrats have vowed to block her confirmation.
Republicans are threatening to eliminate the Democrats' ability to use filibusters to block Bush's judicial picks, beginning with federal appeals court nominee Priscilla Owen.
Reid says that the Constitution does not require that judicial nominees get confirmation votes, allowing the minority to block them. Bush and other Republicans who argue otherwise "rewrite the Constitution and reinvent reality," he said.