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Is the end in sight for the filibuster?
Profs
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This could be news to at least partially reawaken a semblance of interest in national politics for me. Dare I to hope? Here's a quote from the opening of the article so you get the gist. "The Senate procedure, which requires 60 votes to halt, has become the minority party's weapon of choice. But a watchdog group contends the Founding Fathers opposed such a tactic in most cases and has filed suit to stop it."
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2018224911_filibuster17.html
Maybe this should go in another thread, but...I'm too excited not to hope it gets other people excited by having its own. And although I'm not as plugged into the PA pulse around here as I used to be, I can't imagine there's any defenders of the filibuster. If there are, I give you this, "Today, with the filibuster, 21 of the 50 states, representing 11 percent of the population, can muster the 41 votes to stop a majority in the Senate."
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2018224911_filibuster17.html
Maybe this should go in another thread, but...I'm too excited not to hope it gets other people excited by having its own. And although I'm not as plugged into the PA pulse around here as I used to be, I can't imagine there's any defenders of the filibuster. If there are, I give you this, "Today, with the filibuster, 21 of the 50 states, representing 11 percent of the population, can muster the 41 votes to stop a majority in the Senate."
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It's too useful for when the other guys get control for anyone in the senate to vote it away.
I'm OK with this. Tyranny of the majority etc. It's a double-edged sword but I'm glad it's there. I fully expect all progressive complaints about the filibuster to vanish if the Senate flips to Republican majority.
But it's far too overused, specifically the threat of it is far too overused so I would want it to be curtailed regardless of who is in control of the Senate.
if a party has a majority in both houses of congress and the presidency then I don't see why they shouldnt be able to pass what they want.
Because they might pass a bad law, see? We need to prevent them from getting anything done so that they can't do the wrong thing.
Also, I doubt the case is going anywhere - the Senate has explicit constitutional authority to set its own procedures, no matter how dumb they are. (Maybe we should take that power away from them too?)
I agree with this. I think that the threat of the filibuster needs to stop. You want to filibuster? Then do it. Mr Smith that shit.
This. If you feel so strongly about something, be prepared to sweat for it.
The case is arguing that the Constitution prohibits the use of supermajority rule in Congress by defining the specific situations in which a supermajority vote is required. It's a basic concept of law, and one that pushed the Founders to create the Ninth Amendment.
Now there's a philosophy that makes me go, "what."
Do we need to go through why the image of the Mr. Smith filibuster is a bunch of gooseshit again?
I am so sick of this line of reasoning... Can we please stop deifying the racist, sexist old white men? They had a handful of good ideas, but ideas shouldn't be written in stone. They should be allowed to grow and flourish in order to become Better Ideas(tm).
/petpeeve
pleasepaypreacher.net
Every day of the week obama is prevented from pushing his socialist fascist communist hilatorship.
pleasepaypreacher.net
It's not exactly an explicit list of Things That Require Supermajorities. Also note the bill still passes on a simple majority, so there's that getting in the way too. I don't think you're going to get anywhere when the best comparison is to the world's most useless amendment.
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I think you're going to have to since history seems to disagree with you.
It's idealized and not something that's going to happen any time soon, but it is a thing that happened.
It's also an incredibly useful image to use as shorthand in discussion such as this.
But, please, do go on.
It's also important to make sure the majority doesn't ram through shit on the minority - making it used frequently by both parties depending on who has the majority.
What we need to stop doing is voting in the kinds of representatives who make all or nothing stands on single issues and prevent anything of consequence being done until they get their way.
But, to do that we need to stop polarizing the country on a series of single-issues which control most people's voting. That would mean we would have to become less divisive, more inclusive, and more respectful of the other side.
Don't really see that happening.
Well, a better way to put it is that the term "filibuster" actually encompasses several procedural maneuvers. The Republicans don't need to hold the floor, they can just kill the cloture vote.
I am searching for the problem part of this sentence but not finding it.
The party leader has to approve use of it, and once used, you have to take the floor and not yield... No moving on to the next topic, no nothing until the actual vote comes up. Which is a 51/50 vote like it fucking should be.
Use your filibuster to try and sway opinion to your side. Not make everyone move on because we aren't allowed to vote and do our jobs.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
We've gone over this in previous threads. The rules that made holding the floor of the Senate instrumental in sustaining a filibuster were changed in the 1960s. With the change from members present to members seated, the cloture requirement became a static bright line. If you have 41 votes, you can quash any cloture vote, no grandstanding required.
One side thinks everything the government does is.... evilish and they are a little better at getting votes together and by and large they don't mind the government doing nothing.
Both sides use the filibuster, but it is more comparable with a conservative platform. The dens could have used it to fight all sorts of post 9/11 legislation, but they are cowards and most of the people who vote fore them are retarded.
Government is not the problem. Reagan lied to you.
Okay, yeah, that's true, but we were talking about ways we would like to change it, that's what I was going for. I want to make it harder to pull things like this, not easier.
@AngelHedgie Also, I'd like to apologize for how snarky that came off eariler. My bad.
You realize that something can be bad even if some people are hypocritical about it, right? Like, this is a fact of which you are aware?
We need a strong government, as history has proven several times. Indeed, it's why we have the Constitution in the first place.
You may want to check the education and average income levels of states that vote democrat versus states that vote republican before you start insulting the intelligence of democrat voters.
I won't disagree that Democrat leadership has been mostly spineless over the years, though. That's pretty much on the mark.
"Fore them" is a great typo, by the way.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...