I’m not sure it would have come up in a list of a dozen for me either, thinking about it. I know them, but I guess they slip out of my mind pretty successfully… 
That’s only true if the rules are seen as ends in themselves, as in having a nicely-formatted and beautifully caligraphed rulebook is the goal, regardless of what the rules actually say or what the people ostensibly subject to those rules are supposed to be accomplishing. It’s my understanding that the rules currently in place for the U.S. Senate allow legislation to be blocked by a minority, without that minority actually having to explain why or make a public display of their disapproval. If they want to block the other party, they can do so with minimal effort and risk.
Considering these people are your elected officials, essentially your employees (spare me any legal definition that argues otherwise), I’m frankly surprised at the tolerance for these employees finding and using an excuse to only work when it suits them and not be held accountable for it.
Really? I do. Regardless of party affiliation, I figure it’s the governor’s responsibility (and indeed it should be a major priority) to make sure his or her state is fairly represented at the Federal level, including appointing replacement senators as needed.
See? I can be nonpartisan and still raise objections to your arguments. You’re essentially criticizing someone for wanting the change the rules, when you don’t seem to care too much about what purpose the rules serve.
Heck, if it’s that academic to you, you may as well be complaining about people who want to change the dimensions of baseball parks to accomodate a particular player on their favoured team who would put more dingers over the right-field fence if it was closer. At the very least, concentrating on such trivialities might help you avoid more oh-so-distracting invocations of unpopular Republican policies like, y’know, torture and shit.
Perhaps Common Cause (has anyone yet explained who the fuck these people are?) simply didn’t anticipate that the filibuster could or would be abused in this manner? From my understanding, the number of filibusters being used by the Republicans is unprecedented in US history. It seems a rather steep expectation that someone should be required to predict that this behavior was going to happen before they can offer an opinion on the problem, or propose a remedy to the problem.
If I may be so bold:
Best case scenario: Bricker has, through conscientious research and a deep love of the democratic process and rule of law, brought to our attention a 100% accurate assessment of the hypocritical attitudes of Common Cause. Yay, Bricker! But, seriously, big fucking deal.
Worst case scenario: Bricker has, for reasons rather less noble, brought to our attention a cherry-picked and misleading description of the attitudes of Common Cause. Boo, Bricker! But, seriously, big fucking deal.
I’m guessing Volokh Conspiracy - crazy-sounding title, and certainly right wing/libertarian leaning, but pretty reasonable signal-to-noise ratio as far as legal discussions go.
Actually, a slightly embarrassing admission: up until this evening, I was confusing commondreams.org and commoncause.org.
That is what started me my inquiries, yes.
However, I did go to the Common Cause site and review the material independently.
So, yeah, I saw “Common Cause” and thought “Common Dreams.”
However, Google finds at least a page worth of hits where commoncause.org has been used as a link or cite here before. So it’s not completely mysterious.
Bricker may never have read THAT blog, but that blog actually cites the The Volokh Conspiracy, a legal blog with a libertarian/conservative bent.
I’m an occasional reader of Volokh, and have noticed a distinct trend of a piece being on there, and within a day or two, Bricker starting a thread here about it. This thread. His Majority of States Challenge Health Care thread. Public Housing and Constitutional Rights thread. Ransom v. FIA. And on and on. I think it’s kinda like people who read something on Huffpo or ThinkProgress and come over here and start a thread.
I tu quoqued you, and your politics, and you say it’s a hijack.
So either:
a) You admit to intentionally hijacking threads with tu quoues. Which I believe is frowned upon.
b) Tu quouoing is bad when mean old Taos do it, but good when Brickers do it. Which is the same hypocrisy you’re trying to decry.
Start a new thread if it’s important to you to discuss this.
Well, that changes everything. Here I was, prepared to jump to the defense of people I’d never heard of, but now I find out it’s someone else entirely who I’d never heard of? Fuck that!
Hell, I thought Common Courtesy, The Common Cold, and Common GetIt were going to be hypocrites too.
Perhaps I should apologize to rationalists who feel my post did them a disservice.
However, if Bricker’s recourse now is to set the views of an eccentric expat up as a strawman to help him make his case, I think he’s losing the debate.
[quote=“Lightnin, post:73, topic:570549”]
First off: Who the heck is Common Cause? Man, I swear, there are so many Democratic organizations and “leaders” I would’ve never heard of if it weren’t for Republicans scouring their history for comments and actions to take offense to. Do you have a chart, or something?
From Wikipedia.
Bricker, would you care to respond to my post #33? I believe I set out a credible case, taking your snippets at face value.
Is it really hypocrisy to suggest that the Senate’s “Advise and Consent” role maybe shouldn’t have exactly the same set of rules that the Senate uses in it’s “Shall we pass this Bill” role?
Article II, Section 2 establishes a “treaty vote has different rules” rule. I’m not sure I have any problem with the Senate recognizing it’s AIIS2 powers need different rules than it’s Article I powers do.
(And maybe even it’s AI rules need to be a little different from power to power, like S8C11 “To declare War …” maybe?).
CMC fnord!
I don’t think anyone can seriously dispute that the current Republican minority has used the threat of a filibuster more than any minority in Senate history. Rather than save the actual use of a filibuster for that legislation that they deem to be absolutely critical to stop, they use the threat of a filibuster to stop all legislation proposed by the Democrats and thus every single bill now requires 60 votes to pass.
I think one can be objective and still say that the current Republican minority abuses the filibuster and that past Democratic minorities did not. If the Democrats had been outnumbered 60-40 and behaved as the Republicans had the past two years, I’d be ashamed of them, and I wouldn’t spend my days searching left-leaning blogs for word of any Republican group that displayed a hint of hypocrisy just so I could go “neener neener neener”.
Not really. 41 votes are enough as long as they’re Republican votes. The 41 simply announce that they’ll let the U.S.A. go bankrupt unless the majority caves in to every Republican whim.
It is at most a slight exaggeration to claim that this “Republican” Party would be rooting for the Axis if Pearl Harbor were attacked with a Democrat in the White House.
C’mon. Seriously? You’re gonna go there?
I don’t doubt that Republicans would’ve criticized the WH for being insufficiently prepared, but what you said is just grotesque and completely unsupported by the facts. The current Republican leadership is many unpleasant things, but accusing them of opposing our military in such a manner isn’t among their sins.