Posted on 04/04/2017 8:26:13 PM PDT by tonydbaker
Check the polls for the last 10 years (at least): no single profession, nor any other group of people in America, is more universally despised than the US Congress and its members (although, thanks largely to their control over reelection variables, their constituents usually reelect almost all of them.) Their “approval” rating as a group is often in the teens and, today, is actually at one of its high-water marks – up to the low 20’s in some polls!
(Excerpt) Read more at cliffordribner.com ...
Well, Pimp My Blog!
There is nothing unconstitutional about the filibuster.
That doesn’t mean that Ditch shouldn’t invoke the nuclear option for Gorsuch.
I will just note that the ‘Buster used to be 2/3 until Mondale had it reduced to 6/10.
There is nothing Constitutional about the filibuster either.
It’s a Senate rule, and the Senate and House are empowered by the Constitution to make their own rules.
The Republicans (and some Democrats) filibustered LBJ’s nomination of Abe Fortas to be Chief Justice in 1968. Because of that, Nixon had the opportunity to nominate Warren Burger.
(This is the precedent for the principle that you don’t confirm Supreme Court nominees in an election year.)
Quick quiz: Who was LBJ’s nominee to replace Fortas as an Associate Justice?
I don’t think it is really a filibuster. I think the cloture vote is a contrived rule requiring 60 votes to do something, invoked by ANY Senator. Constitutional? I don’t think so....
True that
The irony is that Fortas might have been more conservative than Burger...I guess it’s one of those things we can only speculate about....
There is nothing in the constitution about filibusters.
The filibuster rule is a rule of the Senate procedures. The constitution indicates that each House of Congress sets their own rules. Those rules can be changed at any time.
The constitution calls for a 2/3 vote, or super majority, for some particular situations. Among those are ratifying treaties, approving a constitutional amendment, and override of a presidential veto. Otherwise, a simple majority vote would suffice under normal circumstances.
The founding fathers envisioned that the Senate votes would be equally divided sometimes, which is why they provided for the Vice President to be the tie breaking vote if needed.
The point is, the founding fathers didn’t envision that you would need a super majority of 60 senators to approve most matters. They envisioned a simple majority, with exceptions such as I’ve noted about, which do call for a super majority.
The HOuse use to have a filibuster also. It then got to many members and did away with it.
Time for the Senate to do the same. We can always put it back. Trump is the last chance we can’t wait anymore.
The constitution calls for a 2/3 vote, or super majority, for some particular situations. Among those are ratifying treaties, approving a constitutional amendment, and override of a presidential veto. Otherwise, a simple majority vote would suffice under normal circumstances.
The founding fathers envisioned that the Senate votes would be equally divided sometimes, which is why they provided for the Vice President to be the tie breaking vote if needed.
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EXACTLEEEEE.
Homer Thornberry of Texas?
How the senate conducts the business of the senate is the sole purview of the senate. No one, not even SCOTUS, gets to decide how they handle their own business. If they want to decide issues by thumb wars, that is their business.
Now, voters have a say in who sits in the senate, and voters might react really poorly to sour grapes temper tantrums, but there is no constitutional challenge to such things.
Oklahoma Senator Inhofe has been strongly conservative. However, I've heard him say that his motive in becoming a Senator was "to be one of the hundred most powerful people in the world".
The filibuster, though not rooted in the Constitution, probably did serve a useful purpose back when the Senators actually were elected by their state legislators. When the States were actually sovereign the Senate acted as a check on the Federal government.
Would Fortas and his potential replacement LBJ nominated have been a more conservative combination than Burger and Fortas (who was forced to resign not long thereafter)?
(Of course, his successor was Harry Blackmun, so...)
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