Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., will make the necessary parliamentary moves to get Erroll Southers, President Obama's nominee to head the Transportation Security Adminstration, confirmed next month, Reid spokesman Jim Manley said today.

As we told you earlier this week, Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., has been using his senatorial prerogative to delay a vote on Southers because of a dispute over whether or not TSA employees should be permitted to unionize. Though the Christmas Day attempt on a Detroit-bound jetliner is increasing calls for a permanent head of TSA, DeMint shows no sign of backing down. Today his office sent reporters a document in support of his view. Granting collective bargaining rights to the TSA's 50,000 screeners, it argues, "would reverse the flexibility given to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to perform its critical aviation security mission."

Speaking for Reid, Manley called DeMint's actions "disgraceful" and promised they "would not be allowed to continue."

When the Senate returns from its holiday recess Jan. 19, Manley said his boss will file for cloture on the Southers nomination. That's Senate-ese for saying that Reid will call for the debate on Southers to end and the voting to begin. It will take 60 votes to break the DeMint filibuster.

Update 2:02, p.m.: DeMint spokesman Wesley Denton just sent us this response from his boss:

Senator Reid completely ignored this nominee until the recent terror attempt, and now he's trying to show concern for airport security. There's no need for Senator Reid to grandstand by filing cloture. I'm only looking for some time to debate the issue and have a vote so this isn't done in secret. I hope this critical debate and the Christmas bomber incident will convince Reid and President Obama that we cannot give union bosses veto power over national security at our airports.

Update 3:20 p.m.: As the nation's transportation security administrator, Southers would have the power to grant collective bargaining rights to the agency's employees. So far, he's been mum on whether he'd do so. But the man who nominated him, President Obama, is on record as favoring granting full union rights to TSA employees. Click here to see a letter that then-candidate Obama wrote to the American Federation of Government Employees on the subject.

(Posted by Kathy Kiely)