Sanity Prevails

Yes­ter­day evening, I’m very hap­py to say, san­i­ty took back one of Amer­i­ca’s hal­lowed insti­tu­tions: the Sen­ate. A group of 14 Sen­a­tors, half of which came from either par­ty, came togeth­er and actu­al­ly gov­erned. Rather than pan­der to their “base” con­stituents, these men and women worked to pre­serve the func­tion­al­i­ty of the Sen­ate. (Sto­ry at NPR)

I’m not going to give any back-sto­ry on this. You can use Google News for that, if you wish. How­ev­er, I will just say this. No mat­ter how far to the left I may be (either from the cen­ter, or just where you may think the cen­ter is), I am hap­py to see the Cen­trists pre­vail. I know I get worked up from time-to-time about the Right, and come on like I want noth­ing but pro­gres­sive pol­i­tics from now until the sec­ond com­ing of Noam Chom­sky. How­ev­er, I tru­ly believe that it is through the cen­ter that our coun­try is the most sta­ble. I believe that was the inten­tion of the founders of this coun­try in writ­ing a flex­i­ble doc­u­ment that gives weight to delib­er­a­tion and dis­cus­sion. Nowhere in the world of pol­i­tics is that ide­al more evi­dent than in the U.S. Sen­ate (minus the past cou­ple of months).

Last­ly, and I was­n’t expect­ing to be say­ing (Edi­tor’s Note: You typ­ing this, Jason) this, but I am very proud of Vir­ginia Sen­a­tor John Warn­er ® for being one of the 14 lev­el head­ed indi­vid­u­als behind this compromise.

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Categorized as Politics

By Jason Coleman

Structural engineer and technical content manager Bentley Systems by day. Geeky father and husband all the rest of time.

2 comments

  1. I’m glad there was a com­pro­mise, but can’t you imag­ine what would hap­pen to the voice of the minor­i­ty if the judi­cial fil­i­buster was elim­i­nat­ed? Frist is a fas­cist. I’ll just step off this lit­tle box now.

  2. The Sen­ate is a body that works based on major­i­ty rule, which is fine. How­ev­er, the fil­i­buster is the pow­er-tool of the minor­i­ty. It isn’t to be used light­ly, and the Democ­rats (to their cred­it) weren’t doing that. They were block­ing some 9 or 10 out of 250 court appointees, which isn’t real­ly dif­fer­ent than when the roles were switched under the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion, only then the Repub­li­cans used more pro­ce­dur­al tac­tics rather than the fil­i­buster. That’s more shady if you ask me, but for anoth­er conversation.

    To do away with the fil­i­buster, if even only for judi­cial nom­i­na­tions, is remark­ably heavy hand­ed. I am tru­ly sur­prised to see Bill Frist try­ing this. He just does­n’t have that kind of polit­i­cal clout (not yet). He obvi­ous­ly wants to have the path clear for get­ting a con­ser­v­a­tive into the next Supreme Court open­ing (a slot which is every Pres­i­den­t’s dream-of-dreams). If Frist can do it now, great. If he could do it as the next pres­i­dent, which he appears to have seri­ous aspi­ra­tions on, even better.

    This is a man who got into the Sen­ate as some­thing of a mod­er­ate, and who in the last cou­ple of years has worked tire­less­ly to pan­der to the hard­core, fas­cist right wing. This, along with the Ter­ri Schai­vo diag­no­sis-by-video-cas­sette, are some of the lat­est in a string of remark­ably dis­turb­ing moves. He is solid­i­fy­ing the reli­gious right base for the 2008 nom­i­na­tion. What’s every bit as scary as the fact that he seems to be the cur­rent favorite (even over Jeb Bush), is the fact that his dumb moves seem to be pay­ing off amongst that group, no mat­ter how much main­stream Amer­i­can may disapprove.

    You can always hop up on your soap box here, be it a right or left or indif­fer­ent one. That’s what the com­ment form is for.

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