Saturday, November 23, 2013

Mourning Becomes Electra

And the Senate becomes the House.

This is interesting.

This is interesting, and also insightful.

The problem was not the filibuster, which actually was a problem.  The Repubs were abusing it, their obstruction was bad and dangerous.  That's all true.  However, if the Senate rule is that the rules are whatever a simple majority says the rules are....that's worse.

The U.S. is NOT a democracy, if by democracy you mean simple majority rule.  The dodge that "no, it's a republic" is true enough, but the real point is that many of our institutions are explicitly designed to prevent majorities from imposing their will.

An extremely insightful video, with a remarkably handsome commentator.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

If there's one bill you absolutely must filibuster, isn't it the bill to end the filibuster?

Thomas W said...

The real filibuster problem seems to be the fact a senator can basically say "I filibuster this" and they're stuck. Merely going back to the traditional filibuster (you need to stand and talk for hours) would help limit things to the really important issues. Today it essentially requires a 60-40 majority to pass legislation.

TeeJaw said...

Republican obstruction was bad and dangerous? No it wasn’t. It was damn good that they were blocking Marxists radicals from becoming judges who would (and now will) help Obama shred the United States Constitution.

Tom said...

Thomas W: what's wrong with requiring a 60% majority? Think of all the bad bills that would never have passed, had that been the rule in both houses!

Ah, you might say, what about good bills...? My answer: excepting only bills that repeal, or partially repeal previous bad law, there hasn't been a "good bill" in Congress for more than a century.

Dirty Davey said...

So the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a bad law? And the Voting Rights Act?