Update: Sanders yielded the floor at about 7 p.m. The clerk called the roll. If you are near a television, turn on CSpan2. If you are online, watch the feed here. He has held the Senate floor, more or less, since 10:25 a.m. Also you should check out isberniesandersstilltalking.com. Alex does some of the early [...]
This morning Washington woke up to reports on how the White House was going to go after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s opposition to the financial reregulation bill. “McConnell’s arguments that the Democrat’s plan for Wall Street reform will perpetuate bailouts is pure fantasy cooked up by Frank Luntz in a right wing focus group [...]
The Senate is bracing for a possible all-nighter as leaders have thus far failed to reach an agreement on the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment (HIRE) Act. You may remember this as Harry Reid’s relatively small $15 billion jobs bill that he introduced after yanking the Baucus/Grassley deal. The House then passed an amended version, and Reid [...]
More than five days after he began but two days too late to prevent a cut off in services that will now have to be fixed retroactively, Senator Jim Bunning gave up his one-man filibuster of a $10 billion bill to extend unemployment benefits for 30 days. The measure passed with large bipartisan support 78-19. [...]
Senate Democrats are looking to force Jim Bunning, who has single handedly blocked a bill extending unemployment insurance benefits (amongst other provisions) causing them to lapse on Sunday, into an actual filibuster. Well, sort of. Roll Call reports that Dems are lining up a series of senators who will attempt to move for a vote [...]
Third Floor U.S. Senate The GOP Senate conference is downstairs having their weekly policy lunch on the second floor of the Senate. I hear Kentucky’s Jim Bunning is getting an earful in the meeting and rumors are swirling that he may cave and accept Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s offer to have a vote on [...]
Michael, per this post, I’d again like to make this argument: The filibuster is not the problem. The filibuster is the solution. If only they made Senators like they used to. UPDATE: For those of you Swamplanders who want to delve into the geeky details of what it takes to actually conduct a filibuster, here’s [...]
In political journalism, process stories are said to be bad. They are too inside baseball. They track only incremental movement. They are technical and complex. Readers have better things to do. They care about what happened, not how it is happening (or why it is not happening). They want to know about results. (For what [...]
It’s been quite a week for my Make Them Filibuster campaign. Two high-profile endorsements! First, Governor Ed Rendell and now historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. Here’s what she told Jon Stewart last night on the Daily Show: Let them filibuster. You realize how great they’re going to look, these Republicans, trying not to go to the [...]
My favorite cause seems to have picked up a new spokesman: Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell. We’ll see if the Little Girls of the United States Senate pay him any more attention than they have me. (In addition to the two links above, you can read more of my earlier arguments on this subject here, and [...]
