Posted on 04/26/2005 4:59:32 PM PDT by CHARLITE
[“obstruction of legislation in the U.S. Senate by prolonged speechmaking,”]
filibuster: The use of the term for “a politically delaying tactic such as a long irrelevant speech or several such speeches used by politicians to delay or prevent the passage of some undesired legislation” has now virtually obliterated its former semantic equivalence to freebooter which originated in the USA in the 1880’s. A freebooter is defined as “anyone who lives by plundering others, especially a pirate.”
In the middle of the nineteenth century bands of adventurers organized in the United States were in Central America and the West Indies, stirring up revolutions. Such an adventurer came to be known in English as a filibuster, from the Spanish filibustero. The word had originated in Dutch, as vrijbuiter. Its travels on the way from Dutch to Spanish are uncertain, but it is likely that the Spanish borrowed the word from the French, flibustier, fribustier, who apparently got it from the English flee-booter, freebooter. Early in the nineteenth century, John Randolph, a senator from Virginia, got into the habit of making long and irrelevant speeches on the floor of the Senate.
The Senate got so fed up with such tactics that it voted to give the presiding officer explicit power to deal with such problems.
In 1872, however, Vice President Schuyler Colfax struck a blow against the expeditious handling of Senate business with his ruling that “under the practice of the Senate the presiding officer could not restrain a Senator in remarks which the Senator considers pertinent to the pending issue.”
Within a few years the use of delaying tactics in the Senate was rife.
Senators practicing such tactics were compared with military adventurers, filibusterers, who wreaked havoc in other countries, and were said to be filibustering.
Over the years the word came to mean “obstruction of legislation in the U.S. Senate by prolonged speechmaking,” after a congressman described one such obstruction as “filibustering against the U.S.”
Now the word is back in English from its former piratical meaning, but this time with a new form and meaning of disruption and interference.
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On a related note, it's interesting to note that 'gerrymandering' is almost always pronounced with a soft 'G' even though the person for whom the original 'Gerrymander' was named pronounced his name with a hard 'G'.
However, there is a big difference between delay and stopping. A minority should not be permitted to stop a vote on a measure or confirmation that requires a simple majority to pass. If a delay lasts beyond 3-6 months, then that is really a "stop" and should not be permitted.
Interesting read.
Instead of simply getting rid of filibustering judicial appointments, how about getting rid of the filibuster altogether? That way, when the Republicans STILL aren't getting anything done, they can't blame it on those powerful minority Democrats.
What the republicans need to do is force the Democrats into a real filibuster as it carried out in the old days.
Back then, unlimited debate would mean that the Senator was forced to talk non-stop until he physically dropped. When he ran out of things to say, he could read names out of the phone book.
Such a spectacle would play great on TV but the Republicans can't seem to be bothered to bring their sleeping bags to the Senate floor to tough it out as long as it takes to be read to vote when Ted Kennedy keels over.
Exactly. Rush Limbaugh was talking about this last week. He said that this "filibuster" is really ridiculous. The Democrats merely announce that they "intend to filibuster" this or that Bush nominee, but they aren't forced to carry it out. These days, the announcement is sufficient, which produces an unrealistic picture to the average American........especially those who are too young to remember "the old days," when senators were filmed holding forth for hours on end.
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