Would love to see the archived Times' articles about how lovely the filibuster was when Senate Democrats used it to delay Civil Rights legislation 40 years ago.
See #32
Couldn't go back that far, however, here are some interesting tidbits:
June 28, 2003 Saturday
Strom Thurmond, Senate Institution Who Fought Integration, Dies at 100
By ADAM CLYMER
Despite the role of civil rights in his political evolution and his record-breaking filibuster of 24 hours and 18 minutes against the civil rights bill of 1957, Mr. Thurmond always insisted he had never been a racist, but was merely opposed to excessive federal authority.
June 5, 2003
From One Esteemed Corner, a Lesson About the Senate's Filibuster Rule
By CARL HULSE
In a letter sent this week, Robert A. Caro, a biographer of Lyndon Baines Johnson and author of "Master of the Senate," which won a Pulitzer Prize this year, warned lawmakers against diluting the rights of the minority even as he noted the filibuster was a potent tool used against the civil rights legislation championed by Senator Johnson...Mr. Caro noted that a filibuster cuts both ways. "If it is being used against you, it is a vicious weapon of obstruction, whose use in a democracy is unconscionable," he wrote. "If it is you who are using that weapon, it is a great one to have in your arsenal."
May 23, 1993
Filibuster Rises to Breathtaking New Heights of Irresponsibility
EDWARD SCHNEIER
BERTRAM GROSS
This system, undeniably undemocratic as you suggest, and perhaps unconstitutional, as was recently suggested by Lloyd Cutler, has been further corrupted by what we might call a caucus filibuster.
May 11, 1993
A Useless Filibuster
Sixty votes. That's what it takes to break a Senate filibuster and speed a measure to a floor vote, where only a majority is required for passage
This time, with some luck, democracy of the small "d" variety will prevail.
July 3, 1994
The Nation;
Filibusters: A Changing Breed
By ADAM CLYMER
...Neither example bears much relationship to the current use of the filibuster. Refusing to agree to set a time for a vote has become a routine Republican tactic designed to defeat or dilute all kinds of bills of less than epoch-making importance... they can prevent the Democrats from assembling the 60 votes the rules now require to force a vote. Sometimes they even refuse to agree to a vote on a motion to start debating a bill. Using one parliamentary device or another, it is possible to filibuster one measure at least four times.
Nor is there much theater to the filibuster any more. Round-the-clock sessions to tire out the angry minority and expose them to ridicule were a manageable tactic when a filibuster came only once every year or two. But they would exhaust the Senate today when filibusters come almost every week. Since the 1960's the Senate has fought filibusters by just having a series of votes to end debate, and doing other less controversial business in the meantime.
That may change this summer. If Republicans refuse to agree to a vote on health care legislation, as some have threatened to do, round-the-clock sessions are likely. Senator George J. Mitchell of Maine, the majority leader, will probably set up cots in the corridors and do everything he canto enable television to treat the Republicans as obstructionists. With the growing national sense that Congress is a waste of time and money even when it is working hard, that is a label many Republicans fear.
June 29, 1984
Pass the Civil Rights Act of 1984
Editorial Desk
...Time will be short after tonight's convention recess to overcome obstructionism in the Judiciary Committee, the threat of a filibuster and the Reagan Administration's harassment. The Civil Rights Act of 1984 needs urgent help. ..Once again it will take all the strength that moderate and bipartisan leaders can muster to overcome them. But they will be overcome.
September 26, 1982
IN THE NATION;A SMALL 'C' VICTORY
By Tom Wicker
The filibuster, so-called, was despised by liberals when Southerners used it to defeat civil rights bills. But eventually the press of events and a slowly-but-surely developing national consensus brought about the needed legislation. But liberals have seldom hesitated to filibuster when they thought it necessary. For as the late Senator Wayne Morse, a master of the art and a former law school dean, used to teach his students: ''He who controls procedure, controls substance.'' Extended debate in the Senate is an established and legitimate procedure for thwarting an impatient or momentary majority. Its purpose is to stand off the kind of ill-conceived and fundamentally damaging legislation Jesse Helms did his best to impose on the nation in the name of religion and conservatism.
[off topic - courts: Another wise feature is the law's correction of a 1980 Supreme Court decision, which made it harder to attack discriminatory pre-1965 election laws -particularly laws enacted for no obvious racial motive but with telling racial effects. Two days after President Reagan signed the new law, the Court endorsed the change by correcting its two-year-old ruling in a case brought by black voters from rural Georgia.]
August 2, 1981
CONGRESS NOW SUFFERS FROM LOSS OF MEMORY
FRANCIS X. CLINES
...Some days, memory seems turned on end, as with the chronic civil rights filibuster in the Senate of late, in which Northern liberals are playing the old Southern role of the willful, defiant band at bay, while Southerners and their allies slowly move toward success in rolling back Federal school busing laws. Last week, the opponents of busing came within one vote of shutting off the filibuster...
December 28, 1980
HEADLINE: A CHANCE FOR FILIBUSTER REFORM
By David Cohen
The last two Congresses have been at the mercy of some champion Senate filibusterers, most of them Republicans. When the 1981 Congress gets under way, the new Senate minority party, the Democrats, may be tempted to brush up on their filibustering techniques.
That would be gravely irresponsible. At stake is the governability of the Senate. The present filibuster rule makes it easy to obstruct Senate business and hard to carry out the majority's program.
The Senate ought to change its rules so that a majority of the body is able to work its will on major issues after thorough debate...And as a responsible leader often frustrated by filibusters, the Democrats' minority leader, Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, should cooperate in that effort...
The key to making the Senate governable is a compromise on the filibuster rule. The Senate should limit the number of cloture petitions that may be filed on a single bill and, as a trade-off, lower successively the number of votes required to end the filibuster.
No more than three cloture petitions should be permitted on any one bill. On the first vote to stop a filibuster, cloture would require a two-thirds vote of those present and voting; if necessary, a second vote would require 60 votes; a third vote, if necessary, should require 51 votes - an absolute majority...
would show that the Senate can act deliberatively and decisively. Then, it could earn our respect.
---David Cohen, before becoming in 1975 president of Common Cause, a nonpartisan public-affairs lobby, was a Capitol Hill lobbyist for liberal legislation
November 8, 1993
Editorial Desk
A Good Start on Overhauling Congress
their plan will rile turf-conscious colleagues. Among other things, it would limit senators' committee memberships, wipe out many subcommittees, reduce opportunities for filibusters, make Congress obey its own laws, and bring in outsiders for ethics investigations
it is a good start on a responsible reply to public discontent.
August 16, 1993
Editorial Desk
The Phony Retroactivity Scare
Mr. Clinton understood
But his clever two-stage policy was buried by a Republican filibuster.
June 14, 1993,
Editorial Desk
It Sure Quacks Like a Filibuster
It's now apparent that Senate Republicans have two overriding goals with respect to the campaign-financing reform bill now before their chamber -- neither positive... They hope to do so without being seen as obstructionist
The game won't work. If serious political reform dies in the Senate, the Republican fingerprints will be apparent to everyone
The challenge right now is to break that filibuster and pass the bill
he wants the Republicans to allow an up or down vote on the bill itself. That's more than fair. The Republicans should stop quacking and get on with it.
June 6, 1993Editorial Notebook;
New Age Filibusters
By KARL E. MEYER
it wasn't Madison who put the wrench in the machine. He didn't invent Senate Rule XXII. That's the rule permitting unlimited debate, and as presently construed, the measure makes it all too easy for a Senate minority to paralyze action, as Republicans did with Mr. Clinton's stimulus package
But nowadays the Senate engages in what one critic, Norman Ornstein, calls New Age filibusters, exploited regularly by individual senators to gain gratuitous leverage: "The norms of the Senate are so lax that no one suffers vilification or even criticism. . . ." Result: gridlock. Why blame Madison for that?