Regarding the Senate’s current cloture rule requiring 60 votes to end debate, Senator Barbara Boxer recently told a Moveon.org rally crowd: “So we’re saying we think you ought to get nine votes over the 51 required. That isn’t too much to ask for such a super important position. There ought to be a super vote.” (Sen. Barbara Boxer, remarks at MoveOn.org rally, Washington, D.C., March 16.)

What a difference a few years and a change in administrations makes. Here are Boxer’s thoughts on the role of senators, taken from the congressional record in May 1997:

“According to the U.S. Constitution, the president nominates, and the Senate shall provide advice and consent. It is not the role of the Senate to obstruct the process and prevent numbers of highly qualified nominees from even being given the opportunity for a vote on the Senate floor.”

Boxer’s own words expose her blatant, partisan hypocrisy and condemn her ongoing obstructionism denying “highly qualified nominees from even being given the opportunity for a vote on the Senate floor.”

One such nominee is Justice Janice Rogers Brown, whom President Bush nominated nearly two years ago, in July, 2003. Brown is the first African-American elected to the California Supreme Court. She was re-elected by California voters with a whopping 76 percent of the vote. She is a single mother, the daughter of Alabama sharecroppers who worked her way through college and law school. I would think Boxer would — and should — delight in supporting a woman, a minority, and one of California’s shining examples of excellence.

Justice Brown’s résumé is available for all to see at the U.S. Department of Justice Web site: http://www.usdoj.gov/olp/brownresume.htm.

— Ann E. Hamilton, Simi Valley