Fox News has repeatedly misrepresented Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's proposal to reform the filibuster and is conflating his current plan with a broader one that Reid clearly rejected.

Reid has announced he will confront current GOP filibusters on seven presidential nominees, including leadership positions for the Department of Labor, Environmental Protection Agency, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), in addition to the Democratic members of a bipartisan slate to staff the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). If Republicans continue to refuse to allow an up-or-down vote on these nominees to the executive branch, Reid has indicated he has backing from his caucus to change Senate rules and eliminate this specific type of filibuster.

Chief National Correspondent Jim Angle, however, continued Fox News' recent misleading coverage on the topic and confused the proposal with one that would also require up-or-down votes for judicial nominees, a change Reid has currently ruled out. During the segment, Angle repeated GOP talking points that President Obama “is getting faster nominations than [President George W.] Bush did” and that the proposed rule change resembles one that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell floated in 2005. From the July 15 edition of America Live:

But the recycled citation to an unnamed Congressional Research Service (CRS) report stating Obama's nominees are faring better than Bush's and the claim that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell proposed the same change to the rules in 2005 continues a bait and switch. Both the CRS report (which could lead to the opposite conclusion, depending on what comparison you use) and the “nuclear option” that McConnell and his colleagues pushed in 2005 are applicable to judges, not the blocking of nominees to the executive branch that Reid is currently addressing.

It is precisely because Republicans have extended their kneejerk filibusters to non-judicial nominees whose qualifications they don't contest that Reid has finally been able to convince the last holdouts in his caucus that something - even limited - must be done.

As MaddowBlog's Steve Benen pointed out, the CFPB and the NLRB cannot function without confirmation of their respective nominees, essentially nullifying the statutory components of financial reform and labor law these executive bodies are responsible for. It is this use of the filibuster beyond disallowing up-or-down votes on legislation and judicial nominations to blocking critical executive branch personnel - obstruction that literally stops government from functioning - that will change under Reid's proposal.

Contrary to Fox News' reporting, it's not yet about judges.