QOTD -- Filibuster

 

"The Founding Fathers, who designed Congress to be run on simple majorities, would have seen the filibuster as a perversion of their vision for the Senate. Despite recent claims about its centrality in the Senate's working, the filibuster was not a product of the founders' work, and it has never been enshrined in the Constitution. It came about after the fact, largely by accident, enabled by a loophole in the Senate's rules and a willingness of some members to exploit it.

"The name given to the new practice in the mid-19th century showed what contemporary Americans thought of it at the time. A "filibuster," in the language of the day, was a plunderer or a pirate. Those who employed the newly invented scheme to block legislation and prevent progress in the Senate were seen, metaphorically, as exactly that — pirates who had hijacked the legislative chamber and steered it to their own ends."  Princeton historian Kevin Kruse, in "Senate's Capitol commission fail highlights Manchin's filibuster ignorance."  It's a good read, describing how this anti- democratic feature has only been used to thwart the good.  The history is there for anyone to read.  Anyone using "tradition" and preserving government as excuses for keeping this racist anachronism is either willfully ignorant or a bigoted charlatan.