Compare and contrast

From the May 11, 2005, front-page editorial in the New Hampshire Union Leader.

"Primary Voters Will Be Watching"

The filibuster — the rules of which have in fact been changed (by Democrats) over the years — has been used and was intended to be used to slow or block legislation. Sometimes, it has been used disgracefully so. Civil rights legislation was blocked for decades by anti-black Southern senators.

But only when George Bush came to office four years ago did Democrats in the Senate use the threat of filibuster to block judicial nominations from getting before the full Senate for a simple majority vote. (emph added)

And from the May 10, 2005, New York Times op/ed piece by George J. Mitchell, a former Senate majority leader.

"The Not-So-Secret History of Filibusters"

Since 1789, the Senate has rejected nearly 20 percent of all nominees to the Supreme Court, many without an up-or-down vote.

In 1968 Republican senators used a filibuster to block voting on President Lyndon B. Johnson's nominee for chief justice of the Supreme Court. During the debate, a Republican senator, Robert Griffin, said: "It is important to realize that it has not been unusual for the Senate to indicate its lack of approval for a nomination by just making sure that it never came to a vote on the merits. As I said, 21 nominations to the court have failed to win Senate approval. But only nine of that number were rejected on a direct, up-and-down vote."

Between 1968 and 2001, both parties used filibusters to oppose judicial nominees. In 2000, the last year of Bill Clinton's presidency, Republican senators filibustered two of his nominees to be circuit judges. They also prevented Senate votes on more than 60 of Mr. Clinton's judicial nominees by other means.

So much for the assertion that filibustering to prevent votes on judicial nominees is a new tactic invented by Senate Democrats.(emph added)

Hey, it's America. We get to choose the history that best suits our needs.