Save the Earth - Recycle the Opposition's Old Arguments on the Filibuster

Morning Jolt . . . with Jim Geraghty July 16, 2013 Save the Earth — Recycle the Opposition's Old Arguments on the Filibuster Ah, filibuster debates. So predictable. Every Republican who wants to keep the filibuster and the current rules in place, just cite the arguments of this guy: What [the American people] don't expect is for one party — be it Republican or Democrat — to change the rules in the middle of the game so that they can make all the decisions while the other party is told to sit down and keep quiet. The American people want less partisanship in this town, but everyone in this chamber knows that the majority chooses to end the filibuster. If they choose to change the rules and put an end to Democratic debate, then the fighting and the bitterness and the gridlock will only get worse. We need to rise above the "ends justify the means" mentality because we're here to answer to the people - all of the people - not just the ones that are wearing our particular party label. If the right of free and open debate is taken away from the minority party, and the millions of Americans who asked us to be their voice, I fear that the already partisan atmosphere in Washington will be poisoned to the point where no one will be able to agree on anything. That doesn't serve anyone's best interests, and it certainly isn't what the patriots who founded this democracy had in mind. We owe the people who sent us here more than that - we owe them much more. Those words are from then-senator Barack Obama, speaking April 13, 2005. Then again, maybe they can point to the arguments of this other guy: The filibuster is not a scheme and it certainly isn't new. The filibuster is far from a procedural gimmick. It's part of the fabric of this institution we call the Senate. It was well-known in colonial legislatures before we became a country, and it's an integral part of our country's 214-year history. The first filibuster in the United States Congress happened in 1790. It was used by lawmakers from Virginia and South Carolina who were trying to prevent Philadelphia from hosting the first Congress. Since then, the filibuster has been employed hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. It's been employed on legislative matters, it's been employed on procedural matters relating to the president's nominations for Cabinet and sub-Cabinet posts, and it's been used on judges for all those years. One scholar estimates that 20 percent of the judges nominated by presidents have fallen by the wayside, most of them as a result of filibusters. Senators have used the filibuster to stand up to popular presidents, to block legislation, and, yes, even, as I've stated, to stall executive nominees. The roots of the filibuster are found in the Constitution and in our own rules. That, of course . . . is Senator Harry Reid of Nevada back in 2005. Come on. We all know that any Senate majority leader with more than 50 votes but fewer than 60 votes is going to want to get rid of the filibuster, and any minority leader is going to want to keep it. Neither party has held  60 or more U.S. Senate seats since 1979. Democrats came close in the 111th Congress  (the delay in Al Franken's swearing-in, and the deaths of Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd all complicated the Democrats' effort to control 60 seats); the Republicans had 55 in the 109th Congress. For the foreseeable future, most Senate majorities will have between 50 and 60 votes. If you're Harry Reid, the current intolerable situation means you need to hold your 53 votes together, keep Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine on board, and then get five Republican senators to go along. That may not be easy, but it's hardly Mission: Impossible. Put simply, pick five out of the following: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mark Kirk of Illinois, Susan Collins of Maine, Jeffrey Chiesa of New Jersey, Rob Portman of Ohio, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. As we all know, John McCain of Arizona, Marco Rubio of Florida, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, and Orrin Hatch of Utah have been known to buck the party line, depending on the issue. The 60-vote threshold makes sense depending upon the piece of legislation or the importance of the nominee; it's usually a bad idea to have a sweeping change rammed through, over sizeable objections, by a bare majority. Call us when the minority demands 60 votes for renaming a post office. Don't listen to me, listen to Thomas Jefferson: "Great innovations should not be forced on a slender majority." Or for a more modern assessment, try Daniel Patrick Moynihan: Back in 1993, when Hillary Clinton first tried to reform the nation's health-insurance system, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned about the difficulty of getting such a gargantuan bill passed: "The Senate has its own peculiar ecology," he told me. "Something like this passes with 75 votes or not at all." Moynihan was then chairman of the Finance Committee, the Senate's natural choke point for big social-engineering schemes. He was worried that the Clintons, especially the First Lady, were being stubborn, trying to jam their bill through with a bare majority rather than build a bipartisan consensus.  Of course, if you subscribe to President Calvin Coolidge's belief that "it is more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones," the filibuster is a beautiful, noble tool. Way to Go, Bob Filner Supporters. Way to Go. Wow. San Diego mayor Bob Filner is an absolute  (Redacted by National Review Online to preserve good taste.) Former City Councilmember Donna Frye along with attorneys Marco Gonzalez and Cory Briggs outlined the evidence they point to for calling for Mayor Filner to resign and claimed they're going to file a claim of sexual harassment with the city. At a news conference downtown, Frye relayed the stories from two constituents describing unwanted sexual advancement. One woman described what happened after a meeting with the mayor, claiming, "Immediately after asking if he could kiss me, Mayor Filner grabbed me and kissed me" according to Frye. The second constituent claimed that after meeting Mayor Filner for a breakfast meeting to discuss issues, the mayor suddenly grabbed her and kissed her on the sidewalk. "Jamming his tongue down her throat," Frye alleged. The constituent went on to allege that Filner "quickly had his hand on the inside of her bra," Frye claimed. Frye said the woman felt in order to be heard by the mayor she would have to accept the unwanted sexual advances. "Bob Filner is tragically unsafe for any woman to approach," Frye said. No, really, he's an  San Diego mayor Bob Filner's former fiancée said she recently broke off their engagement because he was verbally abusive toward her and blatantly sent sexually explicit text messages to other women, KPBS reported. Bronwyn Ingram, 48, also believes the 70-year-old mayor, who was elected in November, should resign, according to a statement Ingram provided to KPBS . Isn't it nice when you know the guy you backed was the better man? Can Ken Raise Enough Cash? We all more or less knew that Virginia's Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli was going to get outspent by Greatest Political Fundraiser of All Time Terry McAuliffe, but just how bad will it get? Looking pretty bad right now: Virginia's Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Terry McAuliffe, outraised his Republican challenger Ken Cuccinelli in June, and McAuliffe's campaign has more than twice as much money in the bank. McAuliffe, a former national Democratic Party chief who cultivated a reputation as a talented fundraiser, collected $1.9 million in June, according to a release from his campaign on Monday afternoon. McAuliffe reported having just over $6 million in cash on hand at the end of last month. Cuccinelli, Virginia's conservative attorney general, raised $1.1 million last month. He had $2.7 million in the bank through the end of June. Of course, life is not all wine and roses for McAuliffe. America Rising finds him claiming he doesn't know anything about a company called "Leaf Green Energy" . . . a company listed as a partner/affiliate of McAuliffe's company, Capital Management International. Leaf Green Energy matters because, as Will Allen reported, the company is "headquartered in a Cayman Islands building long derided as a tax shelter by President Barack Obama and other prominent Democrats." The McAuliffe campaign keeps insisting there's no connection between McAuliffe and Leaf Green Energy, but the Virginia State Corporation Commission names McAuliffe as the Registered Agent for Capital Management International (CMI), and it lists his home address in McLean, Va., as the principal office of CMI. Stop Insisting that Every High-Profile Legal Decision Vindicates Your Worldview! Thank you, William Saletan: The 911 dispatcher who spoke to Zimmerman on the fatal night didn't tell him to stay in his car. Zimmerman said he was following a suspicious person, and the dispatcher told him, "We don't need you do to that." Chief prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda conceded in his closing argument that these words were ambiguous. De la Rionda also acknowledged, based on witness and forensic evidence that both men "were scraping and rolling and fighting out there." He pointed out that the wounds, blood evidence, and DNA didn't match Zimmerman's story of being thoroughly restrained and pummeled throughout the fight. But the evidence didn't fit the portrait of Martin as a sweet-tempered child, either. And the notion that Zimmerman hunted down Martin to accost him made no sense. Zimmerman knew the police were on the way. They arrived only a minute or so after the gunshot. The fight happened in a public area surrounded by townhouses at close range. It was hardly the place or time to start shooting. That doesn't make Zimmerman a hero. It just makes him a reckless fool instead of a murderer. In a post-verdict press conference, his lawyer, Mark O'Mara, claimed that "the evidence supported that George Zimmerman did nothing wrong," that "the jury decided that he acted properly in self-defense," and that Zimmerman "was never guilty of anything except protecting himself in self-defense. I'm glad that the jury saw it that way." That's complete BS. The only thing the jury decided was that there was reasonable doubt as to whether Zimmerman had committed second-degree murder or manslaughter…. In court, evidence and scrutiny have exposed… difficult, complicated truths. But outside the court, ideologues are ignoring them. They're oversimplifying a tragedy that was caused by oversimplification. Martin has become Emmett Till. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is using the verdict to attack Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law, which wasn't invoked in this case. The grievance industrial complex is pushing the Department of Justice to prosecute Zimmerman for bias-motivated killing, based on evidence that didn't even support a conviction for unpremeditated killing. Zimmerman's lawyers have teamed up with members of the Congressional Black Caucus, inadvertently, to promote the false message that Zimmerman's acquittal means our society thinks everything he did was OK. It wasn't OK. It was stupid and dangerous. It led to the unnecessary death of an innocent young man. It happened because two people—their minds clouded by stereotypes that went well beyond race—assumed the worst about one another and acted in haste. If you want to prevent the next Trayvon Martin tragedy, learn from their mistakes. Don't paint the world in black and white. Don't declare the whole justice system racist, or blame every gun death on guns, or confuse acquittal with vindication. And the next time you see somebody who looks like a punk or a pervert, hold your fire. ADDENDUM: Remember the controversy over General David Petraeus' salary at City University of New York? Well, he's now down to $1 per year. Lest you fear he's getting ripped off: "Petraeus is teaching one seminar with 16 students, and CUNY offered 16 graduate students to assist him, in addition to the three Harvard graduate students who helped him assemble the syllabus." NRO Digest — July 16, 2013 Today on National Review Online . . . THE EDITORS: A federal civil-rights case against George Zimmerman would be a mockery. Eric Holder's Cynical Threat. ANDREW C. McCARTHY: With pointless, meritless "investigations," Eric Holder and this president have politicized the Justice Department, maybe irreparably. It's the CIA Investigations All Over Again. JOHN YOO: Look in the federal statutes book — you won't find anything with which to charge Zimmerman. What Federal Law Has Zimmerman Violated? THOMAS SOWELL: The political intervention in the Zimmerman case is an appalling reflection on our system. Is This Still America? ERIC GINZBURG: The media are inventing reasons to blame the verdict on Florida's gun laws. The 'Stand Your Ground' Excuse. PATRICK BRENNAN: Liberals deny crime statistics so they can emphasize another agenda. 'There's No Such Thing as Black-on-Black Crime.' MONA CHAREN: With new technology, racial provocateurs can be in our own pockets. Race in the Internet Age. DENNIS PRAGER: The election of our first black president hasn't reduced racial tensions. On Race, No Hope or Change. RICH LOWRY: The fact that someone defending an unpopular, inhumane form of abortion and opposing any reasonable restriction has become a Democratic hero tells you all you need to know about the party's moral bankruptcy. Wendy Davis, Abortion Extremist. VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Mouthing Sixties anti-Western slogans is the way to our president's heart. Obama's Authoritarians. 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