Filibuster change: the countdown to a ‘Humpty Dumpty’ rules change

"I love the Senate, but right now the Senate is broken and needs to be fixed. It’s time for course correction." - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada), speaking at the Center for American Progress, Monday morning

Something that could shake the bustling tunnels beneath the U.S. Capitol is about to be released by Sen. Reid - a recipe for ending the gridlock that is keeping President Obama's nominees to executive branch appointments from being confirmed by the United States Senate, under its constitutional obligation to advise and consent. Reid is holding fast to his threat to change the Senate rules regarding the filibuster, to make it easier for "whoever is president, [to] have the ability to pick their team."
Reid calls his plan "a minor change, no big deal." But many observers, even those who support filibuster reform, say the maneuver is a slippery slope, with cascading side effects that may be worse than the gridlock itself.
"Senator Reid would be opening a Pandora’s Box if the and the Democratic majority were violate the Senate rules by resorting to a subterfuge like the nuclear option to 'amend' the Senate rules," Emmet J. Bondurant, the lead attorney in a lawsuit against the U.S. Senate to end the filibuster on constitutional grounds, wrote to us in an email.
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D.C.'s vulnerability tactic - a cry for help?

"I think it comes as no surprise not [only] to the American people, but even [to] members of Congress themselves, that right now things are pretty dysfunctional up on Capitol Hill."

- President Barack Obama, Tuesday, April 30, 2013, during a White House press conference

It's very hard to tell, but it seems that the policy branches of our federal government have bared themselves to our anger, disappointment and distrust. They have embraced a recovery program - not an economic plan, but the one that starts with them finally admitting they have a problem. READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE>>>

Republicans shameless attacks based on sham principles

It’s probably a holdover from war propaganda technique. Dehumanize your enemy; make them less sympathetic. For Republicans, that requires inventing an artificial social standard for which they can create consensus, something they ironically call the “real America,” a militaristic, political force of religious, cultural warriors who fight for all they choose to define as good and true, a standard that exists only because believing makes it so. They then point out how communities that challenge that standard are unfaithful, greedy heathens.
It could be as simple as Group X saying, “We keep the poor from dying,” and the Republicans claiming Group X gives help to murderers, rapists and thieves. Wanting a hand up is cast as envy. Wanting a fair wage is seen as ingratitude. Asking for considerations when one has needs but no means becomes socialism.
Planned Parenthood and the United Nations are among those the GOP has singled out in its fight, organizations that a generation ago were honored and revered by Republicans and Democrats alike. Emboldened by their hand in the destruction of ACORN, an organization that did nothing but help inner city communities, they think they have a precedent of success for their self-righteous attacks.

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For Obama, it's really always been about unity

President Obama, Vice President Biden and their
families celebrate their reelection, in Chicago, early
Wednesday morning. (From Voice of America video

If there was ever a question about which commitment President Barack Obama has made in his life that will live beyond his presidency, it is his stubborn belief that a united America, without the distraction of division, can and will accomplish great things. Regardless of whether he is able to reach effective but difficult compromises with the Republican led House of Representatives over the next two to four years, he will always be remembered for the clarion call for unity he sounded in his 2004 speech to the Democratic National Convention. He doubled down on that plea early Wednesday morning, when, in victory, he addressed thousands of supporters in Chicago.

"I believe we can seize this future together," he said, "because we are not as divided as our politics suggest; we're not as cynical as the pundits believe; we are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions; and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are, and forever will be, the United States of America."

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) can take the stage and argue with the White House and the Senate majority over revenues and deficits and the fiscal cliff, but in the face of a voting public hungry for Washington to set aside its differences, it makes them and their caucuses seem small and petulant, mice in the face of the human sized task of serious governance. It is a task the president seems ready for.

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Filibuster castrates majority rule, violates Constitution

"It's not a rule of debate. It's a rule of silence, a rule of censorship." - Emmet J. Bondurant, lead attorney in the lawsuit against the United States Senate, calling the filibuster rules unconstitutional

Sometimes it seems like the filibuster holds up every bill, motion and nomination that comes to the floor of the U.S. Senate. Last week, though, President Obama signed into law a bipartisan bill that bypasses the Senate for nearly 170 executive nominees and 3,000 Officer Corps positions. But that does little to raise the hope that Congress' "legislative inertia," which Justice Antonin Scalia joked about during oral arguments on the Affordable Care Act, is going to budge in any significant way.
The abuse of the filibuster, and its affect on the dysfunction of our legislative branch, is the number one reason that Congress is regarded with such low esteem by the American public.
Atlanta attorney Emmet Bondurant made some news last spring, when he filed a lawsuit, in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on behalf of Common Cause, members of Congress, and others, seeking to throw out the filibuster rule in the Senate on Constitutional grounds. Speaking to a group from the Georgia Lawyers chapter of the American Constitution Society, in his hometown, last Wednesday, Bondurant laid out his case for the better part of an hour, like an attorney making a presentation in a federal courtroom, except with PowerPoint slides, and without interruptions from the bench.
Bondurant acknowledged that the U.S. Constitution allows the Senate to set its own rules for debate, but, he insisted, the filibuster rule, as it has evolved, does not promote debate. "The filibuster promotes obstruction," he said. "It promotes hypocrisy."
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The Perils of the Marginalizing of Rand Paul

Out of the Mainstream, into the Teapot

Let's start with this number: one-third. Depending on which question you go by, according to recent polls, around one of three American voters sympathize, empathize or otherwise endorse the efforts of the Tea Party. Granted, NBC points out in its poll with the Wall Street Journal, released this week, that of the 41% of voters who say they support the Tea people, 75% get their news from Glenn Beck and FOX News. An AP-GfK poll released last weekend says that one quarter of potential voters "called themselves supporters of the conservative tea party movement."

Enter Rand Paul, the new Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate from Kentucky, with his election victory "message from the Tea Party," saying, "We have come to take our government back." The message goes even deeper than that. The Tea Party movement thrives on its marginalization by the "establishment," and we dismiss the group at the peril of all that is civil about America.

Before the sun was even cracking the horizon in Appalachia Wednesday morning, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee had issued a press release critical of what it called Paul's "out-of-touch views to the general election electorate in Kentucky." It seems to me, that is exactly what got him elected - his out of touch views. Even his missteps with Rachel Maddow the next night only made the revolutionary tea baggers appreciate him even more.

Compare the DSCC's attempt to thwart Paul's momentum with that of his challenger in the GOP primary race, the McConnell backed Trey Grayson. Grayson issued one television ad accusing Paul of wanting to "hide his strange ideas." Senator McConnell issued an ad saying, "I know Trey Grayson and trust him." Trust from someone as inside Washington as the Senate minority leader doesn't go very far in an election where there is a pervasive, irrational loathing of incumbency. Despite the fact that Grayson even had the endorsement of Dick Cheney, he was just too "establishment."

"A lot of the things we [in the Tea Party] talk about are a chastisement to both parties," Paul told CBS News on Tuesday, before the polls closed, and both parties - like Wall Street before the collapse - are blind to the threatening rhetoric from those who walk in lockstep with Glenn Beck.

They would be wise to heed the words of New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson (D), who told CNN, "It was an anti-incumbency vote across the nation. If you ran against Washington, you did well."

That anti-Washington sentiment, and telling voters their candidates are outside the mainstream, will only embolden and strengthen their willingness to confront the status quo, now that the Tea Partiers have a face in the race.

-PBG

Knight on a Dark Horse

Is Georgia Finally Ready for Someone with Fresh Ideas?

All over this country there are invisible candidates with great ideas and no media. That is, the media does not consider them "serious" candidates. In Georgia, early voting began today for next week's primary, which features a list of Democrats running for the chance, however slim it may be, to unseat the horribly complacent and complicit Republican senator, Saxby Chambliss.

The two Democrats who have gotten the most media attention - and have the most funds - are:

Vernon Jones - a metro Atlanta county CEO who voted for George W. Bush both times and has run out of closets in which to store his various skeletons;

Jim Martin - a former state legislator, cut in traditional Georgia Democrat style, who recently lost a statewide vote for lieutenant governor.

Georgia is one of those states where the Democrats are always re-running the last election and expecting a different result. Hence, the party machine has chosen to back Jim Martin, since he has name recognition on a statewide ballot and - naturally - he's older and white. They even got the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to endorse him.

Yet in the same endorsement, in the first line of only the second paragraph, the AJC says "Rand Knight, an environmental engineer and software salesman, has the intellect and character" but they criticize him for being too young and inexperienced. "A seat in the U.S. Senate," they say, "would be too big a step, too soon."

But Rand Knight is the only candidate who has been endorsed by the NEA, the Georgia Association of Educators and the AFL-CIO. In the campaign's press release about the NEA endorsement, they quote GAE president Jeff Hubbard, who says, "Rand Knight’s education positions are forward-looking and address education as a lifelong process," and he added, "He has fresh ideas and the passion to persuade other legislators to provide our schools with the funding they need to be successful and helping college and post-graduate students finance their education."

In a campaign season where change and hope transcend their sloganism, Rand Knight is real change, positive change.

He has a very strong following among young voters. He is an environmentalist with a degree in environmental engineering. He would tackle the energy and climate crisis like a scientist and not a politician. Despite what the AJC says, we cannot wait for him to try again in another capacity. If we wait much longer and merely attend to the status quo for political expediency, it will be too late for America. I don't think we can afford to do that. He also believes that essential to our resurgence as a nation is a firm commitment to education. He would be a rarity in Washington - a Senator who cares more about filling up children's minds than special interests' pockets.

So I am urging all of my local Georgia readers to tell their friends about Rand Knight, go to his website and his Facebook pages. Let others know about this dark horse and vote for him this week in early voting or Tuesday July 15. With five candidates in this race, there will almost certainly be a run-off, and it would be great if Georgia could make one of the names on that ballot be Rand Knight. Please vote!

-PBG

Russ Feingold's Video Response to FISA Bill

Russ Feingold's Video Response to the FISA Bill

(Copied from the "Progressive Patriots Fund" site)

Dear Friend,

Senator Russ Feingold has promised to do everything in his power
to stop the FISA bill from becoming law. Because of this he's
received an outpouring of support from people across the
country. See his video thanking us for our support at the link
below.

http://www.progressivepatriotsfund.com/russ-responds

Follow this link to sign up:
http://ga1.org/progressivepatriots/join.html?rk=F7eKNEpzCats