According to my twitter feed, Obama’s deal in Copenhagen is a sham and a failure. Can we just impeach him and install Hillary already?
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
All your base are belong to Tunch.
Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.
Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.
Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.
I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.
Bark louder, little dog.
That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.
I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.
Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.
I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.
And we’re all out of bubblegum.
I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.
When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.
Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.
The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.
The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.
The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.
It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.
Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.
We still have time to mess this up!
Accountability, motherfuckers.
We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.
This fight is for everything.
Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.
Violet
Step away from teh Twitter, JC. Time for a little pet therapy and maybe a +1 or 2. Been a rough week. Lily and Tunch can make it better.
SiubhanDuinne
@Violet:
I think John needs another opinion here, Violet. Here’s mine:
ETA: I think we would all feel better about things if we could see a photo of Tunch and/or Lily and/or both.
Citizen Alan
I really wish you wouldn’t joke about that because I’m seriously worried that the Repukes will take the House in 2010. If they do, I’m nearly certain they’ll find some pretext for impeachment hearings. I mean, we’re talking about people who simply don’t believe in the democratic process.
They just tried to filibuster a military appropriations bill, something they’d have called treasonous a year ago, Why shouldn’t they start impeachment proceedings against Obama for doing cocaine in college or once being in the same room as Bill Ayers or some damn thing? If Monica Lewinsky hadn’t existed, they’d have gone after Clinton for something even more contrived and silly, after all.
Max
I like the comment from Obama when some “journalist” tried to say the deal wasn’t real because it wasn’t in writing (or something like that) and Obama fired back, “well, everyone signed off on Kyoto, and how’d that work out?” (I’m paraphrasing).
gocart mozart
Only natural born citizens can be impeached. I guess railmurkins are out of luck.
tatere
Now, see, I heard that both Hillary and Obama have been replaced by android avatars controlled by George Mitchell. It’s always the quiet ones…
J.
Al Franken for President. He’s good enough, he’s smart enough, and, doggonit, he had the cojones to tell Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman to shut the f*ck up. That alone should make Senator Al Franken (D-MN) presidential material.
In other news from Scandinavia: GM is shutting down Saab. Now what are Liberal elitists supposed to drive, Volvos?!
Comrade Mary
@SiubhanDuinne:
And mine:
Don’t make us get all recursive on you, Cole. There are enough geeks here who could make this very painful indeed.
PeakVT
Stop using twitter, for pete’s sake. It’s obviously perfect for people who fart out the first thing that comes into their heads. Why do you want to be on the receiving end?
valdivia
For the first time in decades we have a president stepping up with international diplomacy to make global climate coordination happen and this is a failure? Is there EVER anything that this man accomplishes that is not demeaned by these people? WTF?
geg6
Well, John, I can honestly say that I doubt I’ll criticize this at all. You can only push the Chinese so far, especially since we are so indebted to them. And just getting them to the table was a major accomplishment. So good on Obama if he got anything out them at all. I have almost no complaints about the administration’s foreign policy moves and, especially, Obama’s personal diplomacy. So while I deplore his lack of leadership on HCR and financial reform and his willingness to embrace too much of Bush’s extra-constitutional agenda, I like his foreign policy instincts.
General Winfield Stuck
@Citizen Alan:
Whether we pass a flawed HCR bill, or nothing at all, I see the 2010 stage set for big loses by dems in the house. Luckily, the dem senate races already favored them, but they still might lose 3 or 5 seats.
I personally think that passing a flawed bill, THAT WILL COVER MORE PEOPLE AND MAKE THOSE WITH INSURANCE FEEL MORE SECURE ( the upper case is for emphasis, not shouting) will dampen those loses, but no one knows for sure. I do believe however, a flawed but decent bill getting passed will help dems avoid an electoral catastrophe in 2012. Depend also greatly on job creation, but signs look hopeful for that.
Derek
It’s like I always say: fuck Twitter.
Jennifer
President Biden?
I figure we haven’t heard from hum because his connections within the Senate can’t be compromised, in case he need to leverage them. But, I still want him to express his feelings about his former Senator brethren in a very uncandid manner. Would pay to hear it, actually.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
Twitter appears to be a mechanism for people who have nothing to say, to say it more often, and to a wider audience, and faster, than ever before.
I’m glad to see that people are keeping a close eye on the material there.
{ rolls eyes }
Comrade Dread
I don’t know about Obama, but turning off the computer, cracking open some whiskey, and playing with the pets and family is definitely a plan I can get behind.
MikeJ
You now that thing google just added where on selected searches twitter results show up in an auto scrolling box in your regular search results?
Firefox, greasemonkey, and a script get rid of it.
Gwangung
Hm. MY progressive friends are happy that he got a lot o developed countries together. A lot of the southern hemisphere countries are not happy but I think that goes ad much to China as anything else.
Leelee for Obama
@valdivia: The answer to your question is no. He will not even get credit if his strategy in AfPak works, because that will be played as merely continuing the teh awesome job Dim Son started.
WTF, indeed!
kay
@valdivia:
The whole conference was a disaster. It was ballsy to go at all, because he couldn’t win.
Remember: we learned from the Asia trip that the President only goes overseas to come back with a prize. He’ll take tons of shit for trying.
The politically savvy thing to do is to not try.
Dr. I. F. Stone
For a change, a good idea from John.
Jennifer
[email protected]Jennifer:him, not hum. I still can’t type worth a damn on my iPhone.
And add me to the hate Twitter crowd.
Violet
@MikeJ:
Oh, that’s excellent – very much needed. Thank you. The first time I saw that Google/Twitter thing, I couldn’t figure out what was going on. Then I did and just got ticked off. Why do they make me look at that crap when I just want some info? Wankers.
Joe Lisboa
For a change, a good idea from John.
Man, that PUMA juice must be potent stuff. I’ll have whatever you’re having, hold the cluelessness.
Comrade Jake
If the economy turns around over the next few years, look for these people to credit the death tax disappearing in 2010.
Zifnab
I, for one, welcome my dim witted overlords.
kay
@Dr. I. F. Stone:
Well, except Hillary tried too. Good for her. Have to show up. And listen to endless second-guessing when you get back.
Comrade Dread
Sadly, no.
The politically savvy thing to do would be to scream “F*** you, world.” while giving them the finger with each hand in a sort of Nixonian pose.
Rick Taylor
__
Right wingers should like that, shouldn’t they? Forceful, dynamic, the embodiment of foreign exceptional ism, going in and telling those foreigners how it’s going to be?
valdivia
@Leelee for Obama:
sigh. if he stays it is a huge betrayal, he goes he loses too even if he got something. sigh.
@kay:
I know but the thing is that if he had not been there the talks would have totally collapsed so how can this be nothing? he held this together by bringing a group of developing countries to agree to something which is more than anyone expected. so for me, I know I am an O-Bot, this is a win.
Makewi
Did you see where MoveOn is against passing the health care bill? Good times.
gnomedad
@Dr. I. F. Stone:
“Interpreting obvious sarcasm literally” maneuver == fail.
Citizen Alan
@valdivia:
I’m very pleased that we have a President who (a) has genuine diplomatic instincts and skills and (b) actually believes climate change is genuine. That said, I’m really caring about Copenhagen either way because any treaty will need Senate approval. Given the events of the last three days, I think it’s more likely that an asteroid will destroy all life on Earth before we get 60 votes in favor of any meaningful climate change action.
Kirk Spencer
@Citizen Alan: No. The Republicans will not get a majority in the House in 2010. Nor will they get a majority in the Senate.
It’s been probable since January of this year that the Republicans would win about 20 seats in the House. Much blue dog behavior can be tied to this. Some of them are right to be this way for their districts, some have mistaken their districts’ preferences, and some were going to lose even if they paid every voter half a million dollars.
But despite the angst and anger amongst progressives it’s important to remember the Republicans have problems too. Not least is that the Tea Party Coalition is primarying every insufficiently conservative Republican possible – and when Senator Graham with a 95% conservative voting record is considered too liberal you know where that’s going.
I tend to think more seats will be lost by not passing any health care bill than passing a weak and insipid one. On the other hand, I think either is less important than getting the unemployment numbers down (or clearly coming down). People speak with their brains and their hearts, but they vote with their wallets.
kay
@Comrade Dread:
The polling on the bribe to developing nations HRC had to put on the table is just terrible. I’m not knocking the bribe, I think it’s necessary, but still. I have to find a better word than “bribe”, I guess. “Incentive”.
Americans do not want to pay for environmental protection, which we knew, but still. Not popular. At all.
mk3872
Isn’t it interesting the way the MSM coverage of Copenhagen and this week’s HCR mess invovled all kinds of quotes and note from liberals like Howard Dean?
Where was the wall-to-wall coverage of Dean’s opinions when he was pushing for a public option?
The press suddenly discovers libs like Dean & Jane Hamsher when they start saying bad things about OBAMA, not what they say about Repubs.
General Winfield Stuck
@Makewi:
Our resident Bottle Fly is back.
kay
@valdivia:
Oh, I’m all for trying. I just don’t think it’s valued, really. People talk a good game, but no one really celebrates “I made some gains, I think”.
We’re “winners”, valdivia. We only try if we’re assured of a win
That way we never lose :)
kay
@mk3872:
Right. You noticed that, and I did too.
When do you think Hamsher and Dean might get it?
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Pat Buchanan says the Antarctic ice shelf is growing every year and that when it comes to survival, it’s every country for themselves. He will not accept that mankind has anything to do with global warming until he sees it is actually happening.
Must be nice to be able to live in your own reality.
grass
@kay:
Pretty sure Hamsher has already got it.
Comrade Dread
Understand, I’m not endorsing the “F*** you, world” method. I’m just being realistic about what would play well to the chattering masses of pundits and newsholes.
ricky
I believe it is time for Obama to acquire a Potemkin farm in Illinois and spend a substantial amount of his remaining time splitting logs in front of network pool cameras. That way the press can actually see if he has accomplished anything and they can understand it.
Should any of the mutter about what LBJ would have done
he can show them his abs and pick the pooch up by the ears.
The Populist
@valdivia:
Yes, if he ever nukes or carpetbombs a middle east country in the WAR ON TERROR they will probably cheer him….come to think of it they will find a way to jeer that too.
donovong
In other words, the President was not successful in convincing everyone else in attendance to kiss his ass and dance the hokey-pokey in time for the evening news. Epic fail, that.
“The accord addresses many of the issues that leaders came here to settle — and if signed, will represent an unprecedented effort by the nations of the world to take concerted steps to address global warming.”
From the same fucking article. Framing is everything, I spose.
kay
@grass:
You’d think alarm bells would be going off.
“Wait, why am I on tv all the time, all of a sudden, seemingly aligned with all these people I said were idiots just 48 hours ago?”
Shalimar
@Makewi: I did. Difference is, they’re against it because it doesn’t help people enough and you’re against it because it helps people too much.
ricky
@grass:
When she is wearing a pink ribbon and jogging shoes we will know she got it.
The Populist
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
How very christian. We have gone from the country that rebuilt our enemies after WWII via the Marshall Plan to fuck off and die already because we are better than you!
Argh…the selfishness is making me feel shame for this country.
Tonal Crow
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
Ergo, it’s perfect for the Moosekilla from Wasilla.
mcd
Hating Twitter: The “you can’t believe anything you read on the Internet” of the late aughts.
The Populist
@donovong:
Weird because Dick Armey had the same problems!
valdivia
@donovong:
but but it isn’t signed! its fake! he has not accomplished anything. ever!
/snark.
I really just cant get my head around the idiocy of the media, and anyone who see this trip as a failure.
ricky
@Makewi:
I saw where MoveOn has launched their second Five Year
Plan to defeat Joe Lieberman. I guess electing netroots friendly Dems no longer generates the Bucks for Buckrodgers Cyberspace Pac.
Leelee for Obama
@kay: Hamsher won’t, she’s not running for anything, she doesn’t think she has to. I have nothing against Jane, I like her most of the time and I love her passion. I just think she’s mistaken here and that is that. Dean already knows and will do what he needs to do to push and yet support the Party. I hate that the MSM uses this type of thing against us when they never pay attention otherwise, but that’s the horserace mentality they’ve chosen. Don’t watch too much, it rots your synapses.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@The Populist:
I got that from his appearance today on Tweety’s show (Wiffleball). You should look it up if you can, Tweety was having some fun with Pat and the result is the usual Pat and his pat answers.
valdivia
@The Populist:
I am sure. I just love how the ability to recognize accomplishment is now nil all around.
Just Some Fuckhead
Obama can have a T-shirt made that sez “I was President of the United States and all I got was this stupid Nobel.”
General Winfield Stuck
Reading thru some of the threads I avoided earlier for health reasons, (pun intended, sort or) It struck me that all that would be needed to be a repetition of wingnut blogs during the nuke option debate over judges a few years ago, would be to add the word Red to Balloon juice.
Let’s nuke the filibuster, come on we can hit it with a big progressive rock. Really no difference from now and then but the ideology and party id of the participants. Except, actually, the wingnuts were only proposing it for Judges and other executive appointments. The good liberals want to blast the entire damn thing for any legislation.
Just a short statement on this. The left does not own this country outright, nor does the right, and my party “The Druid Center” don’t either. There are roughly 350,000,000 owners of this hells half acre, each owning one share each, which is precisely the number of votes they get. No more, no less. You blow up the senate to get your way, I will fight you every fucking step of the way regardless that I agree with you on about everything else. That is all.
MobiusKlein
Any improvement in expected CO2 level is an improvement.
550 ppm is better than 750. 500 is even better. So yes, getting started at reducing them is a M.Fing start, and I’ll take it.
When we get partial reductions and the sky doesn’t fall, it will help. And the slower the train is going when we get to the cliff, the better.
P.S. if the tree huggers don’t start blowing up coal power plants soon, we’ll know they are just posers.
Makewi
@Shalimar:
I’m pro helping people. I like the outcome to match the rhetoric or intention, and I also like helping people help themselves the best. Knowing that not everyone can, of course.
Some day when you grow up, or should I say if, you might try actually thinking about things rather than reflexively emoting.
gwangung
Hell. YES.
Over and over again. And this President probably knows that this is just a start.
valdivia
@gwangung:
he does. did you read his speech from today? This is exactly the point he makes–just because we don’t get everything we aim for in a deal does not mean we throw it away, get started and then move forward. Funny thing is that this speech could have been about HCR but it was given in Europe about Climate Change it was really good.
MobiusKlein
@valdivia: I spend part of my days slicing bytes out of downloads to make flash programs smaller. Paying attention to what changes makes the download 100 bytes smaller, over time, makes things work. Over the course of a year and 1/2, the thing goes from 800K to 350K, 100 bytes at a time. So it loads in 2 seconds instead of 15. It does not happen without grinding away day after day when things look impossible. Then you look back and realize how far you’ve come.
Look at the world of 1960. We would not have changed from there without the pragmatists and the idealists. (Heck, I even remember thinking gays were icky. )
So don’t let the dicks get you down.
kevina
Bravo General Stuck, bravo!
What’s unfortunate about the “left revolt,” HCR, etc., is that it shows that activists on both sides don’t really give a damn about foreign policy (which HAS been good from Obama). And that’s unfortunate.
mr. whipple
I understand this place requested a truckload of teabags?
Hey, don’t shoot me, I’m just the delivery guy.
Kilks
@General Winfield Stuck
I live in MA and I wish my vote was as powerful as someone who was from ND. Unfortunately, the senate is not proportionately representative. Health care passed the body of congress where every American has the same say.
Grumpy Old Man
@General Winfield Stuck:
Let’s nuke the filibuster, come on we can hit it with a big progressive rock. Really no difference from now and then but the ideology and party id of the participants. Except, actually, the wingnuts were only proposing it for Judges and other executive appointments. The good liberals want to blast the entire damn thing for any legislation.
Just a short statement on this. The left does not own this country outright, nor does the right, and my party “The Druid Center” don’t either. There are roughly 350,000,000 owners of this hells half acre, each owning one share each, which is precisely the number of votes they get. No more, no less.
Are you actually trying to defend the filibuster on majoritarian grounds?
kevina
Completely jettisoning the filibuster, esp. in an era of populist rage IS a mistake. Ammending it, making it easier to overcome? There’s your answer.
valdivia
@MobiusKlein:
Thank you! It’s nice to be here with people who see this instead of the constant yelling of Epic Fail at every turn.
In the previous thread burnpbesq asked about festivus I propose that this week, with all the yelling, can stand for this little south american tradition!
Comrade Jake
At this point I’m not sure that a bill which stated that America should always pursue its best interests would get 60 votes in the Senate.
Joel
@kevina: I liked the idea bandied about at Yglesias’ place and elsewhere of making each successive fillibuster easier to overcome. That allows a lot of room for negotiation.
Grumpy Old Man
@kevina:
Completely jettisoning the filibuster, esp. in an era of populist rage IS a mistake. Ammending it, making it easier to overcome? There’s your answer.
Would you mind explaining why you see such a stark distinction between weakening the filibuster and eliminating it, and why this leads you to prefer the former?
It seems to me that, if you’re concerned about containing populist rage, you ought to be focused on making the Senate more democratic rather than less. If you want to convince people to continue participating within the rules of our current political system, you need to persuade them that those rules (and their participation in them) actually work.
Tonal Crow
@Citizen Alan:
Climate change is an emergency. If anything justifies the Nuclear Option, getting a real emissions-reduction bill signed into law does.
General Winfield Stuck
@Kilks:
I know it doesn’t seem fair, and probably isn’t/ But it is the stuff that keeps a large country with wildly different world views somewhat stable. The Founders, from their experience with Monarchy, created the senate– one, to slow things down, and two, to add an antidote for the tyranny of the majority, that they had long and painful experience with.
So they created a senate with each state, regardless of their population, having exactly two senators each, toward that purpose of stability and giving a voice to the minority.
And also put in the Constitution the concept of “extended debate” and gave the senate the express responsibility for creating it’s own rules to satisfy that requirement. I don’t say that there could be some tweaks or improvements to the filibuster, like when one party completely opposes everything the majority does, as this is a problem. but violating the rules to do it is in effect a congressional coup imo. I opposed it when the wingers wanted to do it for judges, and I oppose it now for dems.
The challenge for this dem majority is to find a way to seek redress through the ballot box, and to convince the voters that to get anything done is to punish the obstructors with electing more dems, or the reverse if the Goopers had the majority and were being obstructed.
The senate formed the cloture rule for a purpose, it was not overnight and was well thought out and debated and voted in by both parties, to achieve enough comity so the senate could function, around the extended debate clause that allowed a pissed off minority to bring the senate to a halt by talking everything to death, and I do mean everything.
That is what was happening around 1920 or circa, I think, with the Treaty of Versaille being stopped. So they created a supermajority vote that every one would abide by called cloture, which limits the debate to just 30 hours once the supermajority was met.
Martin
@MobiusKlein:
Bet you never expected this.
General Winfield Stuck
@Grumpy Old Man:
No, on the grounds that it is a senate rule that can only be legally changed with a 2/3 majority vote, and that the filibuster is primarily due to satisfying the “extended debate” provision.
Kilks
@General Winfield Stuck
You’re arguments work for the existence of the senate itself, not for the filibuster. The filibuster is an accident of history, which the framers did not intend to devolve into a de facto 60 vote requirement. The south was not filibustering before the Civil War, a time so contentious it led to the Civil War.
The founders would have said if it did, like they did with the requirements for amending the constitution.
I think plenty of other diverse countries function with a more representative democracy, but that’s an argument about the senate, not the filibuster.
General Winfield Stuck
@Kilks:
The rules of the senate are not “accidents of history”. They are the product of express granting by the founders for the senate to make it’s own rules. And the filibuster is one of those rules that satisfies a requirement for “extended debate”
edit – I should say the cloture rule, not filibuster.
Kilks
@General Winfield Stuck
Ok, I see your point on the senate being able to make its own rules. The framers did intentionally create a document which was not proscriptive.
If you support the filibuster on debating grounds, would you support amending it so that as the debate moves on, it requires less votes to pass the bill?
For instance, eventually it would only require 57 votes, then 54, and finally 51? That would ensure time for debate, but decrease the undemocratic nature of the filibuster.
Martin
Since I agree, I’ll chime in. There are good reasons for the minority to stop things from happening, but there needs to be some effort involved so it isn’t abused.
I liked Harkin’s proposal. Each vote, taken a week later, would reduce the number by 3. You’d need 60 to break the filibuster on the first vote, 57 on the 2nd, a week later, 54 on the 3rd, 51 on the 4th. So after a month, a simple majority (including the President of the Senate) ends debate. That gives a month for the minority to make their case and win a simple majority, which is reasonable. The majority needs to care enough about it to keep debate open for a month.
valdivia
@Martin:
The Harkin proposal sounds really good to me. Any chance we’ll get the 67 votes for it?
Tonal Crow
@General Winfield Stuck:
What clause is that? I can’t seem to find it.
No. They gave both houses the power to create their own rules, Art.I s.5 cl.2, so that the bodies most concerned with them would be able to create them.
If a rule (in this case, a rule requiring 67 votes to change Senate rules) violates the Constitution (in this case, Art.I s.5 cl.2), the rule loses.
There certainly are legitimate arguments to be made in favor of preserving the filibuster (which, BTW, already has a range of exceptions to it). But arguing that it should be preserved because abolishing it would violate an unconstitutional Senate rule (as you seem, in part, to be arguing) doesn’t fly.
That’s not clear to me. The rules governing the filibuster also have been changed many times.
There ain’t any such clause.
mistersnrub
OT: I saw this on my facebook feed and thought you hooligans would get a kick out it:
“I am looking for recommendations for left, liberal, or Democratic blogs. I prefer bloggers who have actual knowledge or expertise about at least some of what they write about and who use sober and balanced analysis vs. invective, name calling, and silly distortions. In other words, left-wing analogues to McArdle, Bainbridge, Balko, Somin, or Douthat.”
General Winfield Stuck
Absolutely, as I stated in an earlier comment. I do see a problem with what is happening from the gop. I listed one remedy at the ballot box, but also to tweak, or change the existing cloture rule. Just so long as it is done with the rule that requires a 2/3 majority vote. But absolutely not by fiat, or decree by the majority. To me, that is a coup. Of sorts.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@General Winfield Stuck: And I’ll be willing to bet that the majority of people who are now calling for “the nuclear option” on all legislation were horrified and enraged when the ‘Thugs threatened to use it for appointments.
Meet the new boss?
valdivia
@mistersnrub:
OMFG.
Jack
@kevina:
Escalating Afghanistan with tens of thousands of new soldiers and three times as many mercenaries is good FP?
General Winfield Stuck
@Tonal Crow:
All I can say, is the senate itself believes there is such an allowance or requirement in the constitution, either express or implied.
As for the rules in both houses, that may be true, I am not a constitutional scholar. I do watch the senate however, and love it, though it pisses me off how it operates sometimes.
Here is a link for the above quote and a description of what the senate believes is their function and justifications for that functioning.
Martin
@valdivia: No.
The best prospect for changing the rule would be right before a congressional election when the leadership for the next Congress is uncertain. That way nobody knows who is most likely to get fucked over first.
I disagree with Stuck over changing the rule through other means, though. I don’t see the GOP participating in good faith now and I don’t see why Democrats should either. Institute a fair rule and don’t bitch when you’re on the short end of it.
Tonal Crow
@Martin: I also like what I’ve heard of Harkin’s proposal. And we should *try* to get it enacted under the rule requiring 67 votes for rule changes. But if we can’t, we should push it through on a majority vote in reliance on Art.I s.5 cl.2. The world is going to pieces (small ones, of ice), and we can’t have the GOP indefinitely impeding action.
valdivia
@Martin:
I see too that others are thinking about the problem in other ways.
General Winfield Stuck
@Martin:
Not sure I understand what you are saying. But to clarify, I only support one way to change the rule, and that is by a 2/3 majority vote. And that goes for every change in senate rules.
Winning more seats in elections could make that possible, maybe, or to beat the current 60 vote requirement to invoke cloture. But that is an indirect solution.
Tonal Crow
@General Winfield Stuck:
“Extended debate” has usually been the Senate’s practice. That doesn’t mean that the Constitution requires it. There’s nothing in the Constitution’s text preventing it from being circumscribed, and I’ll be damned if I can recall anything from the Federalist saying so. Further, the Senate repeatedly *has* changed the rules governing debate. While it’s true that the Founders intended the Senate to be something of a countermajoritarian balance to the House, and to be more contemplative than the House, circumscribing or eliminating the filibuster wouldn’t contravene those intents.
General Winfield Stuck
@Tonal Crow:
I disagree. The founders gave the senate the power to make it’s own rules. And it did. With a crystal clear requirement that to change any rule there needs to be a 67 vote majority vote. Fishing around the text of the constitution for looholes to vacate that 67 vote requirement, is not a good thing, and I don’t support it. Although, I am aware that it has been done before. And it will backfire on dems politically, I am absolutely certain. Breaking rules to get your way never washes with the public, and it would be an electoral disaster especially regarding so called independents who really really don’t like that sort of thing.
And whatever laws that would arise from such a coup would be challenged to the Supremes, and I bet they would side with me, and others.
edit- then the wingnuts take congress and the WH back and we be fucked.
Martin
@General Winfield Stuck:
Nuclear option. Dems control the rules committee. Frist threatened it when Dems used far fewer filibusters than the GOP has already done this Congress.
General Winfield Stuck
@Martin:
So you support the nuclear option. Then we disagree.
Just Some Fuckhead
@General Winfield Stuck:
But if they can make their own rules, they can just make another that says 51 votes are needed to invoke cloture. Nothing about Rule 22 makes it inviolable. It’s just a rule that can be changed like any other rule.
Tonal Crow
@General Winfield Stuck:
Which directly contravenes Art.I s.5 cl.2. The Senate cannot bind itself to rules that contradict the Constitution.
Art.I s.5 cl.2 is not a loophole. It is the very text that authorizes the Senate to adopt rules, and that, at the same time, constrains its ability to make rules about how rules are adopted. If we place senate rules above the Constitution, when do we stop?
This is arguable, but I can’t see that the GOP paid a price for threatening the Nuclear Option.
Got precedent supporting that idea?
Tonal Crow
@General Winfield Stuck:
What makes you think that the current crop of wingnuts wouldn’t limit or abolish the filibuster just because we refrain from doing so?
Midnight Marauder
@Martin:
This seems like one of the most logical things I’ve ever heard in my life. And yet, I fully understand why such a reform would have a hard time making its way into the grey matter of the Village as a Sensible Thing. It reminds of my favorite scene from the “McStroke” episode of Family Guy.
+5
Noonan
@mistersnrub: Sober analysis and McArdle were used in the same sentence? Really? I need a drink.
Citizen Alan
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
Actually, my position at the time was “go on, I dare you,” because I looked at the calendar and saw how many seats the Repukes would be defending in just two years. The biggest thing that would neutralize the filibuster would be if Obama would stop coddling those who would misuse it. Contrary to popular belief, there are rational Repukes in the Senate, and if Obama had used his early popularity to beat obstructionism like a drum, I think he could have broken this logjam. Now, after nearly a year of getting used to a permanent filibuster, it’s probably too late.
I would, however, very much like to see someone, anyone, ask a Republican on one of the Sunday talk shows how they would have reacted if Democrats had filibustered every Bush initiative for his entire first year in office. But, of course, IOKIYAR.
General Winfield Stuck
@Tonal Crow:
So then the senate rules are violating the constitution in your opinion. Jeebus, that is awful. My suggestion would be to challenge that in court. I would be interested how it turns out.
Everything I have stated here is how the senate itself sees it’s rules. That is the source of my info and beliefs as stated.
And the coup word was just my opinion of what such attempt to abolish the filibuster by fiat would be in practical effect, or not by a 67 vote majority.
Just Some Fuckhead
Stuck, you are suggesting a special Super Rule can exist that can trump all over rules despite being an ordinary rule itself, passed with as little as 51 votes.
Either the Senate can make it’s own rules or it can’t.
Citizen Alan
@Tonal Crow:
Do you really need precedent for the idea that the current Supreme Court would overturn the abolition of the filibuster while the Democrats control the Senate?
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Maybe you missed the part of my quote you made, where in fact any rule can be changed by a 67 vote majority.
head to desk
Just Some Fuckhead
@General Winfield Stuck: No, per the constitution, a simple majority is all that is required to make a rule.
Tonal Crow
@General Winfield Stuck:
The court would dismiss the case, saying that I lack standing to challenge the rules and/or that it’s a political question that is beyond the judiciary’s power or competence to decide. The same thing would happen if the Senate abolished the filibuster by a majority vote and you sued.
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
ah the chicken and egg argument. Well, all I can say is that the current senate rule to change any rule is 67 votes. And that would include, I suspect, a rule change to change the number of votes needed to change a rule.
You are making my head hurt dude.
Tonal Crow
@Citizen Alan:
Remembering Bush v. Gore, I shudder to consider that you have something of a point. Could they really be that corrupt?
General Winfield Stuck
@Tonal Crow:
Well then, if I were you, I would get a hold of the senate dems and inform them that they are doin;’ it wrong. And again, I would like to see what you come up with.
Just Some Fuckhead
Is the Senate so powerful that it can create a rule that it cannot change itself?
What if they decided 101 votes were needed to modify the rules and passed it with your 67 votes, Stuck? Would they have just shut themselves out of the rulemaking process for the rest of eternity?
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
You should join Tonal Crow then, and raise some hell. I hope you succeed.
General Winfield Stuck
@Tonal Crow:
Because as dumb as they are. They are smart enough to know that someday the demorats will run things, and then it’s communes and work camps run by the Great Red Queen.
And that river runs both directions;
Tonal Crow
@General Winfield Stuck: Your argument would allow a particularly crazy Senate to lock in the existing rules for eternity simply by adopting a rule saying so. Quite aside from Art.I s.5 cl.2, do you have any citations supporting the idea that the Founders intended to allow that?
Just Some Fuckhead
Stuck, respectfully, I’d like you to answer my question. What if they passed a rule with 67 votes that required 101 votes thereafter. Would they have shut themselves out of the rulemaking process until such a time as we added a 51st state and two more senators?
valdivia
@Midnight Marauder:
I am jealous! +5. I am not even +1 and the world already feels like a better place.
General Winfield Stuck
@Tonal Crow:
The founders gave the senate the power to set their own rules. That is clear. I hope. Now as far as your claim, that the cloture rule is unconstutional and an illegal rule. Take it to court. I cannot explain my position any better than I have, and I don;’t intend to start repeating it.
Time for a movie.
Tonal Crow
@General Winfield Stuck:
It seems pretty clear that they’re not thinking that far ahead, or they wouldn’t be so obstructive as to raise calls to limit or abolish the filibuster.
Just Some Fuckhead
I tried and failed to find out how many votes Rule 22 got in 1975. It would be ironic to find out it passed with less than 67.
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I have answered it. In clear unmistakeable terms. The founders gave the senate the power to make their own rules. And one they made, was that in order to change ANY rules there has to be a 2/3 majority vote. Not a 51 vote majority, or any other. If you cannot accept that, then you can;t/ And don’t have to. If that is your wont.
Just Some Fuckhead
@General Winfield Stuck: Actually Stuck, my question only requires a simple yes or no. Why is that so hard?
General Winfield Stuck
@Tonal Crow:
Yes, but during that whole episode with the judges and abolishing the filibuster, They made it clear that it was only for judges. And they did have some tradition behind them of not filibustering judges, but it was violated a number of times and tradition isn’t a rule, so it was not justified to nuke the filibuster, for judges or anything else,. IMHO.
nor is it now.
And by the way, did you support the wingnuts in abolishing the filibuster for judges?
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead: @Just Some Fuckhead:
I haven’t answered this question because it makes absolutely no sense to me. Maybe if they were all on LSD.
Citizen Alan
@Tonal Crow:
(cough) Bush v. Gore (/cough)
Edited to add: you beat me to it.
PeakVT
I see two bits of relevant text:
and
To me the second bit says that 1) the Veep will generally be around for Senate business, and 2) he is the tiebreaker on any vote – and thus all votes not specified to be 2/3 (see the first bit) will be by simple majority.
YMMV.
General Winfield Stuck
I wonder if Gaslight is on netflix instant.
valdivia
@General Winfield Stuck:
nope (just in case you were seriously asking)
Just Some Fuckhead
@General Winfield Stuck: I doubt that very much Stuck. But I’ll humor you because yer old and infirm:
In the distant, scary future the Teabagger Party acquires 67 votes in the Senate. They pass draconian rule 420 that creates huge new hurdles for the miniority party and as part of rule 420, they require 101 votes thereafter in order to change Senate rules.
Did they just end the rulemaking process forever?
Tonal Crow
@General Winfield Stuck:
So? GOP 2005 were crazy, but not nearly as crazy as GOP 2009. I have no problem seeing them abolishing the filibuster for all legislation, no matter how nicely the Democrats treat them. I say we limit it first (and reasonably, as in the Harkin proposal) to permit at least one piece of vitally-important legislation — greenhouse-gas emissions limits — to go through. Maybe even we should limit it only for that bill. But we have a real emergency on our hands, and we can’t have the GOP preventing us from handling it.
No, because they wanted to use it to install loads of regressive judges. As it turns out, they got most of the regressive judges in anyway.
There’s a difference between using power for good and using it for ill.
Tonal Crow
@General Winfield Stuck: That question destroys your argument.
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Piss off.
Just Some Fuckhead
Well Stuck, I can only conclude that you aren’t arguing in good faith.
General Winfield Stuck
@Tonal Crow:
I am not making a goddamn argument you morons. I am relaying what the senate considers it’s mandate and function. If you don’t like it don”t tell me my argument is destroyed when there is none. Just like there is no HCR bill left wing wankers are wanking on.
I am done here.
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
And I conclude that you are a clueless troll.
Tonal Crow
@General Winfield Stuck: Oy vey. I need a bagel. BTW, saying that you’re not arguing after arguing for an hour doesn’t win the argument you weren’t making, nor does calling other parties to the argument “morons”.
Just Some Fuckhead
Typical Stuck.
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
typical fuckhead
Tonal Crow
@Just Some Fuckhead: BTW, there are two ways out of your conundrum. One is the argument you and I have made. Another is a more limited version of that argument, which states that the Senate can nuke its rulemaking ability for a single session, but the next session gets to adopt new rules by a majority vote. I think the original argument is less arbitrary, and thus more consonant with the Constitution.
General Winfield Stuck
I can see there are being drawn some clear lines here between the Jane Hamshers of the Left and the rest of us.
Won’t make the mistake again of believing in honest debate with the former. A troll is a troll.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Tonal Crow:
lolz
Just Some Fuckhead
@Tonal Crow: However, there is typically no such thing as a Senate session, right?
General Winfield Stuck
@Tonal Crow: @Tonal Crow:
You ain’t arguing dude. You and fuckhead were having a little circle jerk with one another over fairly tales. By all means continue on.
Just Some Fuckhead
@General Winfield Stuck: Stuck, you may wanna put the hooch away and sleep it off.
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I don’t drink. And as has been pointed out by several others today, you are a clueless moron about politics and policy. But can sometimes tell a good joke.
And I don’t know who the fuck tonal is. Prolly escaped from the GOS.
Keep your radar tuned dude.
Just Some Fuckhead
Alright, fun time is over. Everybody off Stuck’s lawn.
Just Some Fuckhead
@General Winfield Stuck: Yeah, Stuck. John S. Awesome company yer keepin’ there.
DougJ
Twitter appears to be a mechanism for people who have nothing to say, to say it more often, and to a wider audience, and faster, than ever before.
How is that different from blogging?
Tonal Crow
@Just Some Fuckhead: There are “sessions” of Congress as a whole, each two years long.
DougJ
Is the Senate so powerful that it can create a rule that it cannot change itself?
This almost — almost — makes up for all the shit you give me in every post I write.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Tonal Crow: Ok.
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
We will have some more fun tomorrow. No illusions. see ya then.
Just Some Fuckhead
@DougJ: It isn’t every post and you know that.
Citizen Alan
@Just Some Fuckhead:
What a bizarre hypothetical! Forget about Senate rules — by the time the Teabagger Party gets 67 Senate votes, they’ll be able to pass constitutional amendments (and since a majority of states will have voted for Teabag Senators, will likely be able to get them ratified). By then, it will be a little late to worry about procedural niceties.
General Winfield Stuck
@Citizen Alan:
Not bizzare. Just a performance from our resident court jester.
Just Some Fuckhead
They parted ways then, Stuck and Fuckhead, enemies forever. They were bound by a pact of mutual destruction, all illusions of comity gone. Where once they played together joyfully under the soft baby blue glow of Balloon-Juice’s masthead, the only thing they had in common now was a seething red hot hatred for the other, an absolute intolerance brought on by one too many injustices..
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Like I say, you tell good jokes. You ought to stick to that. Then we could get along just fine.
BR
Just watched Obama at Copenhagen. Funny how he comes across as the mature party even on the world stage, just like at home. Sadly the systems within which he’s working don’t allow for him to do what we need him to do as quickly as we need him to.
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Only from you. Never understood why.But will keep it in mind. Oh well.
Tonal Crow
@BR: The need to respond yesterday (actually, 20 years ago) to climate change is the best reason by far to limit (or abolish) the filibuster.
Jody
I’m late to the argument, but I gotta say: He pissed me off on Afghanistan, which I was expecting…gay rights, which annoyed me to no end…and health care, which I feel he showed horrible leadership on…but I can honestly say I don’t know what more he could have done in this situation. Anyone else would have come away with worse, from what I am seeing.
joe in oklahoma
@J.: he is also a Clinton lover. no thanks.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Citizen Alan: Well, ignore the picture story. That was just for Stuck anyway.
Hell, let’s make it more normal. In 1975, Rule 22 is passed with a simple majority creating new filibuster procedures. Part of Rule 22 requires 101 votes thereafter in order to change rules. Has the Senate now forever locked itself out of the rulemaking process? (Or at least until a new state is added?)
Citizen Alan
IIRC, it was one of Douglas Adams’ books (possibly Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency) where one character asked another “if you were hanging from a rope halfway down a cliff, with a hungry tiger above you and a pack of ravenous wolves below you, what would you do?” and the other character, after giving the first an annoyed look, replies “I would wonder how on Earth I got into such a ridiculously contrived situation.”
Chuck Butcher
The Democrats have run into a problem involving their size of majority. The incumbency advantage has kept in people who would otherwise be gone and when you include enough people to get a majority of that size some real different opinions of agenda arise.
There appeared to be an idea that keeping Joe Ho in the Caucus with perks would give some measure of control over him. If that was the thinking, I’d say it was…optimistic. Once the HCR thing is sorted out (however); other important (D) things come to the table and there will be further opportunities to see where Joe Ho wants to go. I doubt anything good comes of that.
Over the next year you will have opportunities to see what your Democratic Caucus really is. I really don’t know what it would take to break their “patience” but I also don’t have any idea what would break it here over HCR – nothing that I can tell, since few have stated just how far they’re willing to … um, go.
President Ronald Reagan
@Dr. I. F. Stone
Yeah, no kidding Obama is way behind on those
death campsre-education centers he promised to build to house all of the Republicans and it’s really bumming me out. And why aren’t Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Sarah Palin and K-Lo wearing burqas yet? Especially K-Lo.Person of Choler
@ricky:
Also sprach Ricky,” I believe it is time for Obama to acquire a Potemkin farm in Illinois and spend a substantial amount of his remaining time splitting logs in front of network pool cameras. That way the press can actually see if he has accomplished anything and they can understand it.
He doesn’t need a farm at the moment. I hear he had to leave Copenhagen a bit early in order to get back to DC ahead of a predicted snowstorm. The press can cover him shoveling the walks at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He will probably have to hide those famous pectorals under a sweater, but he will be seen performing healthy and productive exercise.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Citizen Alan: Alright, call it 100 votes. They’ve decided rule changes have to be unanimous. One motherfucker decides he likes the rules they way they are and so decides never to vote with the other 99 senators to change them. Are they then locked out of the rulemaking process until one of them poisons him or Club For Growth takes him down?
handy
@Person of Choler:
BOB Part II?
ETA: Nevermind. I see the top paragraph belonged to ricky and you were just riffing on that.
This place is becoming increasingly disorienting.
Jason Bylinowski
Inasmuch as a person can hate an inanimate object, I hate twitter. If a more useless and ultimately authenticity-destroying invention has ever graced the planet, I have yet to hear about it. (And yet I’m sure it’s just around the corner)
jwb
@Just Some Fuckhead: The teabaggers are probably stupid enough to do this. BTW I prefer the absurdist 101 vote unpossible to undo scenario–seems more in keeping with the teabagger mentality. On the other hand, as someone else pointed out, if the teabaggers had 67 senators to approve this change, the theoretical question of whether their actions could be undone would be the least of our worries.
Just Some Fuckhead
@jwb: Well, yeah, that’s why I backed up to 1975 and had the 101 threshhold passed with a simple majority.
At some point, it would be nice if someone would answer the fucking question instead of running away.
Is the Senate powerful enough to pass a rule it cannot change?
Martin
@General Winfield Stuck:
From my perspective, the GOP was willing to introduce it over less. It’s their plan.
I’d prefer not to, but the GOP filibustered 70 percent of legislation introduced this year. That’s abusive – not just to the Senate but the House as well as they have to suffer from it. I’m not suggesting getting rid of it, just seek a reasonable middle ground. The point of the filibuster was to extend debate – but no debate is taking place beyond a certain point. Get rid of the 24 hour talking rule and replace it with an 8AM-8PM, 7 days rule. If debate is the point then make it about that. Right now it’s just about shutting down the Senate. Or use Harkens idea which provides for a month.
But something has to give. The Senate is looking like California.
jwb
@Just Some Fuckhead: I wish I could answer but I know fuckall about Senate rules. My guess is that they probably have the power to pass an unbreakable rule but they probably also have the power to break that unbreakable rule and it would come down to whether the SCOTUS would be willing to intervene. Since the unbreakable rule would make the Senate ungovernable I doubt very much that SCOTUS would chose to intervene. Unless SCOTUS wanted to use the unbreakable rule to vacate the Senate power as part of a coup or something– just to up the absurdity of the scenario. But again I know fuckall about the rules. (Enjoyed following your spat with Stuck –however I agree with him about not thinking it wise to blow up the filibuster.)
General Winfield Stuck
@Martin:
If you did that, nuked the cloture rule, then you would have to nuke every rule, which are all subject to “I object”, that would bring the senate to a grinding halt. This is the very reason the cloture rule was instituted in the first place. And then you would just turn the senate into another House, and that would negate the reason, or one of the reasons the senate was created by the founders in the first place.
but I agree with your saying basically the senate is whacked out right now, and something needs to give. The ballot box is the only other thing that could fix it, imo. Unfortunately, the media should be pointing this out, but are just as fucked up as the fourth estate.
General Winfield Stuck
@jwb:
Fuckhead isn’t serious, He is just trolling to fuck with anyone who takes the bait.
Citizen Alan
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Um, okay, if we’re going to assume that the whole Senate just went kuckoo for cocoa puffs and passed a rule like that just for the hell of it, I don’t think it would be constitutional. Not because of Art 1, Sec 5, Cl 2, but because rather because of Art 1, Sec 5, Cl 1, which establishes that a majority of the Senate (i.e. 51 Senators) constitutes a quorum and is capable of passing legislation. Although the Constitution delegates to the Senate the right to establish its own rules, a majority of the quorum is all that is ever required to pass a motion or bill. Or at least that, I would think, is the negative implication which arises from the fact that some votes constitutionally require a supermajority but the Constitution otherwise appears silent on the topic (at least according to my cursory research).
From that, I would conclude that any rule or law which attempted to increase the number of votes needed for action of any sort other than those which expressly require a supermajority according to a specific Constitutional provision would itself be unconstitutional. Or at least, that’s what I suppose. The Framers appear not to have anticipated the Senate being taken over by crazy people. But then, none of us really anticipated James Inhofe, now did we.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Citizen Alan: So Rule 22 is unconstitutional?
jwb
@General Winfield Stuck: yes, but the absurdity of the unbreakable rule very much appealed to me so I was willing to indulge it.
Martin
The senate doesn’t require external intervention to change the rule. It’s their rule, they can choose to follow it or not. That’s why there is a rules committee.
The committee could decide that filibustering 70 percent of introduced legislation is an abuse of the intention of the filibuster, waive rule 22 for a change, and call for a vote on a new filibuster rule. Both the House and Senate have waived their rules in the past subject to the whims of the rules committee. Hell, remember when the GOP pushed through the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 which didn’t even match in the House and Senate. Bush went ahead and signed it. That was a full-on violation of the Constitution. The GOP passed Medicare D after violating numerous House rules.
I’m sorry, but we’re not even playing the same game here.
General Winfield Stuck
@Martin:
Doesn’t work that way in the senate, unlike the house that the majority can and does make different rules for every bill, on amendments and everything else, can be done by the rules committee on a simple majority vote.
The senate requires a floor vote with a 67 vote majority, the rules committee can report a change to be sent to the floor for that vote, but that is all it can do.
If they could change a rule by a simple majority vote, the majority would be doing that.
The only way to bypass a filibuster for any bill in the senate to my knowledge, is by the budget reconciliation process, which is how Bush got his tax cuts through.
All I know Martin, is what the senate itself considers the protocol for doing things, as to the constitutionality of it all, that is above my paygrade.
Martin
@Citizen Alan:
It’s not a constitutionality issue, it’s a ‘we need rules to follow’ issue. I think Stucks argument is that we need to follow the rules because without rules nothing works. The rules can be arbitrary but they still need to be followed. There’s nothing stopping the Senate from breaking those rules down to the point of the Constitution, but once you start breaking the rules, you have no rules and everything falls apart.
The 67 vote rule isn’t unconstitutional – it’s a rule, not a law.
Normally I would agree with all of this, but there are points where you recognize that the rules aren’t working as intended and you need to change them, even if that breaks the rules. The problem with rule 22 and the filibuster is that they are intertwined. If the 60 vote rule is causing the Senate to not function, then a 67 vote rule to change the 60 vote rule can’t possibly function either. It’s a paradox if it holds in every case. It doesn’t, but it’s getting close. At that point, you are trapped in the rule – the only way out is to break it.
Martin
@General Winfield Stuck:
In those instances, the House didn’t change the rules – they just disregarded them. The committee to uphold the rules simply looked the other way. The majority can do that. If you’re willing to violate one rule, why not just violate the rule that would address the violation?
Citizen Alan
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Yes and no, apparently. This is actually becoming an interesting, if arcane, question, and I wish it weren’t after midnight or I’d spend more time on it. Wikipedia directs me to the case of U.S. v. Balin (1890), which states in relevant part:
Wikipedia interprets this to mean that the Senate can always change its rules by a simple majority, but it continues to abide by the 2/3 majority requirement called for by the Senate Rules, presumably for reasons of comity. Apparently, the way the nuclear option would have worked is this: A senator opposed to the filibuster must rise to make a point of order suggesting that the filibuster is unconstitutional under Art 1, Sec 5, Cl 2, at which point the chair rules in that Senator’s favor. Whichever side was filibustering can only respond by moving to table the point of order, but that is a simple majority vote, which if it goes in favor of the non-filibustering side, will end debate. Its called the nuclear option because, once invoked, it apparently can’t be undone. The presiding officer’s ruling that the filibuster is unconstitutional becomes a binding precedent which can’t be overcome.
In other words, the only reason we have a filibuster is because both sides are scared to give it up. Fascinating.
Citizen Alan
Update: This really is quite fascinating. Apparently (according to the same page), Democrats actually used the nuclear option (although it wasn’t called that) in 1975 to invoke cloture with a simple majority, but they came to an agreement with the Republicans to change Rule 22 to allow for cloture with 60 votes instead of 67 and then retroactively undid their use of the nuclear option with a point of order (so as to eliminate the “simple majority” precedent their use of the nuclear option had created).
Midnight Marauder
@valdivia:
Wow. If you felt that at +1, then the only way I can describe how I feel now is that Ragnarok is over, Loki and his minions have been defeated, and I am now enjoying a feast with Odin and Co. in the glorious halls of Valhalla.
This week has been an absolute maelstrom of insanity, hyperbole, and sheer idiocy the world has never seen
since the Alberto Gonzales erayesterday. And yet, I can come to this “midnight at the oasis, put your camel away” and observe two entities that might actually–somewhere, maybe on the planet Earth–be human beings named Just Some Fuckhead and General Winfield Stuck, battle it out like they’re in the motherfucking Thunderdome over whether the filibuster in the United States Senate is unconstitutional.That is why I come to this place; and that is why the GOS makes me feel like I am in a Zac Efron movie.
+11
Also.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@Midnight Marauder:
Yup. Too.
Ubetcha.
gerry
Carter was a failure because he didn’t know how to play in Washington. Obama knows all-too-well how to do that.
aimai
I believe Citizen Alan’s version of things is correct–I looked into this too. There’s no reason, other than fear, that the Democrats couldn’t have gotten up and point of ordered the cloture vote down to a simple majority. And, frankly, I think they should do it. Historically speaking no filibusters have been used for really good purposes. Right now, under the republicans, the Lieberman’s and Nelson’s aren’t doing it to round up new votes and improve legislation so much as they are holding majority legislation hostage. They aren’t trying to convince anyone of the rightness of their cause, they are smply using their vote for cloture as a bargaining chip. This is a deformation of the bargaining and legislative process which empowers people of absolutely no morals over the majority of legislators.
Frankly, I think dropping the number for cloture to 55, or even to 51, actually brings about better legislation because the minority quickly has to go on record voting its conscience, such as it is. Right now we have the worst of all possible worlds: fake filibusters, hard cloture votes, stymie. I’m not afraid of what will happen when the Republicans get back in power–they did their worst with the help of Democrats and they always will. But clearly the Democrats can’t manage with the filibuster/cloture vote as it is currently constructed. Since I don’t anticipate the parties doing a spine switch in the interim I’m more afraid the Democrats will get into power and never be able to rule than I am that the Republicans will get back into power and let the Democrats stop them with the filibuster.
aimai
John S.
@amai:
I’m glad people have finally taken up the debate on the Senate rules. As I suspected – and articulated to Tonal Crow – the situation isn’t so cut and dry.
What the Democrats can do and what they will do are two different things entirely.
PeakVT
@aimai: Since I don’t anticipate the parties doing a spine switch in the interim I’m more afraid the Democrats will get into power and never be able to rule than I am that the Republicans will get back into power and let the Democrats stop them with the filibuster.
You fears have already come true. The consequence will be flipping Congress back to the Republicans much faster than would happen if left to the normal mood swings of the American populace.
Autboy
and why have the Dems behaved so suicidally…? ass clowns
Nick
@mk3872: WIN!
Nick
@mk3872: WIN!
Kirk Spencer
@General Winfield Stuck: Hey, Stuck? I see the problem and you’re misreading that clause. Let me begin by quoting the clause.
Now your contention is that the “two thirds” concurrence requirement is for the whole clause. That’s a mis-reading. Breaking it out of the extended sentence it is:
Each house may determine the rules of its proceedings.
Each house may punish its members for disorderly behavior.
Each house may, with the concurrence of two thirds, expel a member.
To support this we need only look at the first rules of the Senate, adopted on April 16, 1789, and the first change that happened two days later. While both attained a majority, only the initial rules received a 2/3 majority.
In fact, very few changes – minor or major – to the rules have had a 2/3 or better majority. I submit that given the number of times this has changed, your interpretation is mistaken.
General Winfield Stuck
@Kirk Spencer:
Well, then, genius. You need to get in touch with Harry Reid and get the shit straightened out. Geesh.
Kirk Spencer
@General Winfield Stuck: If you’re going to be an ass, you’re going to get treated as such.
I’m very sure Reid’s aware of what it would take. Based on history there are two ways to change the rules.
Method one is sedate and almost in line with the way bills move. The rules committee holds hearings and reports to the senate, the report is considered (debated) by the senate, there’s a cloture vote, if it passes cloture it faces a final vote, and that’s it. So you’ve got a handful of 60-vote threshholds as part of the accept for consideration through cloture process, and a simple majority vote to accept the changes. I assume you see the issue there?
Method two is somewhat catastrophic. Essentially, behavior in accordance with the rule is challenged, a ‘question is called’, and a simple majority decides whether the rule is sustained or rejected. This has happened to the filibuster process in the past, which is how the dual-track process got into the system (as one example). It’s not the only such rule changed on the floor in history. Every such event has had a lot of yelling and screaming, but there’s plenty of precedence. In other words the Republicans did not invent the nuclear option.
I’ll point out as a by the way, Stuck, that I’m for keeping the filibuster. I was when the Republicans had it, and I still am. It sucks (big time) when a party goes into pure denial mode. It’s happened in the past, however, and it usually works itself out. Quite simply it happens on the margins, as total refusal to play gets a return of inability to get anything desired. If you’re not getting anything your constituents begin to notice, and then you wind up getting replaced. It’s not fast, but it happens. Personally, I’d rather have the dual-track rule eliminated and make people actually pay for stopping the majority, but I doubt it’ll happen.
Tonal Crow
More on the question of whether the 67-vote rule to amend the rules is Constitutional:
-> Gold & Gupta, “The Constitutional Option To Change Senate Rules And Procedures: A Majoritarian Means To Overcome The Filibuster”, http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Gold_Gupta_JLPP_article.pdf
-> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_option
General Winfield Stuck
@Kirk Spencer:
You come here with the other bj constitutional experts and make claims you know what it really says, and the senate itself has it wrong;. Your argument IS NOT with me. I was merely pointing out what the rules of the senate are. And that is ACCORDING TO THE SENATE ITSELF. I do intend to believe them over legal genius’s who wank on the internet.
Then you come onto the thread declaring my argument is all wrong and you have figured out the real truth. Same shit with the health bill debate. Wankers wanking about stuff they know absolutely nothing about. But tell us breathlessly they do.
I think you are the smartass here and my snark was meant to convey that. And you are not even close to knowing when I am being a real ass.
General Winfield Stuck
@Kirk Spencer:
Any way you cut it, a majority dissing the cloture rule for legislation constitutes a breach in senate protocol and a rule that everyone has accepted forever, or since it was created. Yes, there have instances in the past in specific narrow cases where a rule has been changed by fiat.
But what this would be is utterly unprecedented in the modern senate. It would be the majority arbitrarily, and against it’s own appointed parliamentarian declaring a rule unconstitutional because it can and wants to have it’s way as a tyrannical majority FOR EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF LEGISLATION.
Once you go down that road, you destroy what the senate was meant to be by the founders, a unique institution that is paradoxicaly undemocratic to stop what using the nuclear option in itself is. TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY.
And if you don’t see to where this would lead and the disaster that would ensue from an already bitterly divided country, then you are a fool, and I am talking about those who promote it’s use, not necessarily you, as you say you are against it.
And I don’t agree that the cloture rule is unconstitutional, and neither does any senate parliamentarian that I have heard, and likely none or few ACTUAL experts on senate rules.
And I also don’t believe it violates any other provision in the constitution.
liberal
Face it, the filibuster sucks.
kevina
Been away since last night, but yes, I’m with some version of Harkin/Yglesias on filibuster reform.
Why? Because there really CAN BE a “tyranny of the majority.”. Turbulent political times could, in the future, produce a very nasty party with a narrow majority. I wouldn’t want that entity doing anything it wanted on 50+1 everytime.
gwangung
Racial minorities have known that for centuries.
liberal
@kevina:
Yes, but as the article I linked to says:
It goes on to state,
liberal
@gwangung:
True. Which among other reasons (cf failed experiment in CA) is why I’m against direct democracy.
The question here, though, is more specific: has the filibuster been, historically, protective of minorities? No.
liberal
@General Winfield Stuck:
Well, there is the fact that other commenters have totally demolished your points in this thread.
General Winfield Stuck
@liberal:
Not hardly. They did build some fairly impressive “internet progressive” strawmen however. Regular bunch of Perry Mason’s/
General Winfield Stuck
@liberal:
But, if you are right, then maybe you could form a “Real DFH” posse and ride over to Harry Reid’s office and set him straight on yer legal genius.
You have a merry Christmas liberal. I really mean that.
kevina
@gwangung and liberal:
Yes, I understand the nasty history, esp. civil rights. To be clear, I think needing 60 votes for everything is stupid and MUST be changed. But completely eliminating it? No, thanks.
B/c while it might have historically benefitted rural cons., don’t assume it always will.
General Winfield Stuck
@kevina:
They don’t want to hear that kind of talk kevina. It’s sellout talk and they are right because we are anti progressive centrists. And the senate is also wrong and operating illegally within our borders. They know this because they read the Wiki page on the constitution.
I am just glad there are so few of these piss and vinegar crusader/morans.
Tonal Crow
@General Winfield Stuck: Keep raisin’ those strawmen. For the record, as I stated earlier, I like the Harkin proposal on gradually-shrinking cloture thresholds. We will almost certainly need it (or some other filibuster limitation) to pass solid greenhouse-gas emissions legislation, which we need to address a 5-alarm emergency. I’m not sure whether the change should go beyond that: to other classes of legislation, all legislation, all legislation and appointments, or all Senate business. There are good arguments to be made around each.
Now apologize.
General Winfield Stuck
@Tonal Crow:
Only to you for the moron remark. But not on anything else.
There are no good arguments for claiming the cloture rule is unconstitutional because it violates other parts of the constitution. This has been vetted for a century, and the cloture rule still stands. Modifying yes, but only with a 67 vote majority. Sorry, but that is how I see it and pop legal analysis by internet bloggers don’;t cut it.
Kirk Spencer
@General Winfield Stuck: No, I pointed out what the senate itself says by history on how rules change.
Look, the cloture rule didn’t exist until 1917. Up till then there was NO way to stop a senator from “unlimited debate”. The cloture rule, threatened for almost 75 years, was added with 55% of the senators approving.
As to the comments of your second response, you seem to not be paying attention. I do not want the filibuster to go away. I think it’s absolutely necessary. I am merely pointing out that if either side REALLY wanted the cloture rules changed, that change would not require 67 votes.
Looking, I can see you’ve been battered which in part explains your snark. OK, I’ll ignore that. I will not, however, let you make up your own facts. Neither cloture (as original by unanimous consent nor by rule 22 as created in 1917) nor a 67 vote requirement for changing the rules are constitutional requirements.
Tonal Crow
@General Winfield Stuck: Thank you for the apology, as far as it goes. On the substance, please read the Gold & Gupta law review article (http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Gold_Gupta_JLPP_article.pdf ). It directly contradicts what you just said, both as to the worth of the argument that the 2/3rds rule for rule changes is unconstitutional, and as to the senate having changed the rules via a simple majority. For example, in 1996, the Senate, by a 56-39 vote, informally changed Rule XXVIII’s requirement that conference committees not add any language that had not previously been considered by either house, even though Rule 22 required 67 votes for rules changes. The Senate considered the change binding until repealing it, again by a majority vote, in 2000. Gold & Gupta at 270-71.
If you read the article, you’ll see many other instances in which the Senate either formally changed its rules under threat of a Art.I s.5 cl.2 rules change (but following the rules-change rules), or informally changed them by a majority vote (in violation of the rules-change rules).
Horse, here’s a nice cool stream.
Kirk Spencer
@Kirk Spencer: One point on which I need to clarify…
Rule 22 also specifically allows for rules to be changed ‘on the fly’. More accurately, it says that cloture of debate on a measure or motion to change the Senate rules requires a 2/3 majority to succeed.
If you don’t read all the other rules and ignore history (such as the 1975 creation of dual track process) then you will believe it always requires 67 votes to change the rules.
However, the potential to change with a simple majority has been exposed and threatened several times in the past. In at least two cases (Byrd in 1975 and Clay in 1841) the issue was put on the table and affirmed by the senate parliamentarian in a game of brinksmanship.
2/3, 67 votes, is the gentleman’s agreement of the existing rules.
General Winfield Stuck
@Kirk Spencer:
Unless you can prove that such a rule violates other parts of the constitution, that by extension of the powers vested in the constitution of allowing the senate to make it’s own rules it’s own ways, then you are wrong and it is in constitutional. Indirectly, like most things are in the constitution. And this proof will have to be adjudicated thru our legal system before I will accept that you are right.
The only real mistake I have made in this debate here is initially stating the “extended debate” term is explicitly in the constitution. Like so many other gray areas it has been vetted by out legal system to what it is today, and interpreted as such. AND FOR THE TWENTYETH TIME, THIS IS WHAT THE SENATE and IT’S PARLIAMENTARIAN has believed as well. The act of the majority to arbitrarily dismiss IT’S OWN PARLIAMENTARIAN’S ADVICE AND RULING to declare a rule unconstitutional is wrong and an act of tyranny imo. and that of a lot of others.
And with most other teasing out of what the constitution is really saying, there are those on both sides of the debate. But time and challenge has not killed the cloture rule. Not by the judicial branch that decides these things, not yet. And until that happens, your analysis means very little, now doesn;t it.
And using the argument that it has been done before does not make it right, or wise, or anything else but governance by the bully.
@Tonal Crow:
And like I said Tonal, there are certainly opinions by legal persons on both sides of any constitutional issue that is not expressly stated in the constitution. And I am not being smart in saying that I could be wrong, but to convince me, you will need to go to court and let them decide. Until then, you are just howling at the moon, respectfully,
Tonal Crow
@General Winfield Stuck: Again, please read the Gold & Gupta article. And if my “analysis means very little, now doesn;t it”, so, too does yours.
General Winfield Stuck
@Tonal Crow:
I don’t have an analysis. I am just relaying the rules the best I can from what the senate itself believes.
How is this to settle things so my headache goes away. I will concede that you could be right and the senate could be wrong, thus, I could be wrong. Please tell me this is acceptable. I will give you a nickel.:)
Tonal Crow
@General Winfield Stuck: No sale. You’re making an argument from your reading of materials from the Senate site that don’t directly address the question of Rule 22’s constitutionality. In particular, you’re making an argument that the Senate’s longstanding operation under Rule 22 means that it must be constitutional. In American Constitutional law, practice usually does not determine constitutionality. The federal courts routinely have overturned longstanding law and practices, such as racially-discriminatory statutes. Also, as the law review I cited described, the Senate has, from time to time, sidestepped Rule 22 by a majority vote, and the courts have never attempted to restrain it from doing so.
Either of us *could* be correct about Rule 22’s constitutionality. Neither argument is watertight. But both are arguments that each of us are making. It’s not me against “the senate”. It’s you and I, each arguing inferences from text and practice.
General Winfield Stuck
@Tonal Crow:
Very few arguments are watertight concerning interpreting the constitution. I am not arguing that the cloture motion, or rule 22 is or is not constitutional. I am arguing in order to change any senate rule, a 2/3 majority is needed to change it, or that is a breach of rules. And that is constitutional.
As i said, just because a few instances where rule twenty two was sidestepped does not make it correct or legal. And since you were against breaking rules to change rule twenty two when the wingers wanted to for judges, but now argue that it would be cool to do, gives you no credibility with me or anyone else. You are just another internet wanker with an agenda. And you are not alone with this rank hypocrisy.
And I don’t care whether it’s a “sale” for you or not. And as it turns out, I was wrong to apologize for calling you a moron. Because you are. As I was saying, if you believe you are right, then do something about it. Prove it in the only way it can be proved. Get a lawyer, or the ACLU to take it to court and if you win, then I will admit I was wrong. Not until then.
General Winfield Stuck
Doubletalk, my good man. Either the 67 vote requirement to change a rule is a rule or it isn’t. Go ask any standing senator or the current parliamentarian and they will affirm it is. Just because Byrd and Clay managed a senate coup and got the parliamentarian to go along with the breach of rules, does not mean it is not one.
And my snark was meant to mock absurd arguments, not due to being battered. I’ve been doing this awhile, battering is par for the course.
Tonal Crow
@General Winfield Stuck: I agree that it’s a breach of Rule 22 to change the rules otherwise than as Rule 22 requires. I do not agree that Rule 22 is constitutional, as you assert.
This is a strawman. I was against the wingers using the nuclear option not because it violates any rules, but merely because I didn’t want to see more retrograde judges installed. I didn’t argue rules or constitutionality; I argued policy. There is no hypocrisy in that.
Apologize.
Finally, on lawyers and lawsuits, you badly misunderstand the scope of the judiciary’s power and willingness to decide cases. For a primer on the significant areas in which courts often refrain from deciding cases, see Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962), Part 4. http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/baker.html
BTW, insults don’t improve your argument; they Godwin it.
That is all.