Senator Angus King (Ind., Maine) addressed the U.S. Senate last Tuesday on behalf of the Freedom to Vote Act. Republicans later blocked consideration of the bill, but his words (above) deserve a hearing.
Excerpts:
“It’s important to remember that most failures of democracy started with legitimate elections, but once in office, the leader manipulated the electoral process to consolidate their hold on power, just as was attempted here last winter. And once power is seized, the control and reach of the modern surveillance state is truly terrifying. Ask the Uighurs in China, or members of the opposition in Russia, if you can find any alive.”
“Russia, Turkey, Venezuela, and Hungary are examples of the slide into authoritarianism just in our lifetimes; those countries still have elections, but they don’t mean much.
And what if the current wave of voter suppression legislation succeeds and keeps tens of thousands of people from voting, or what if in 2024 a partisan legislature in a swing state votes to override the election results and send its own set of electors to Congress? Then it won’t just be Republicans who distrust elections, and we will be left with a downward spiral toward a hollow shell of democracy, where only raw power prevails and its peaceful transfer becomes a distant memory.”
“Filibuster” (from the Dutch word for “pirate” or “freebooter”) is a parliamentary rule the U.S. Senate adopted by accident. These days it has nothing to do with Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Alvin Chang explains how the filibuster broke the Senate. A Vox video.
More:
“Make the Filibuster Difficult Again,” Burt Neuborne and Erwin Chemerinsky, New York Times
“What is the Senate filibuster, and what would it take to eliminate it?” Molly E. Reynolds, The Brookings Institution
“All the Lies They Told Us About the Filibuster,” Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine
Beer-swilling protesters … oh wait, it’s a beer festival near DC’s Navy Yard. Great timing.
Demonstrators protesting the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh gathered outside Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s house in DC this morning, chanting “I Like Beer!” and singing “What do you do with a drunken justice, what do you do with a drunken justice, what do you do with a confirmation early in the morning? Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug!” In case you were blacked-out or in a drunken stupor last week, this refers to Judge Kavanaugh’s spirited “I like beer” defense during his Judicial Committee testimony.
There are people drinking PBR from red Solo cups outside Mitch McConnell’s house at this early hour. They are chanting “I like beer.”
For a paltry $174,000 per annum, U.S. senators slave through a grueling 3-day work week, sometimes for almost 140 days a year. Now cruel Kentucky Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wants senators to work Fridays and weekends, and even during the first 2 weeks of August, the optimal time for inspecting those critical NATO bases on the French Riviera. Is no one concerned about our nation’s defense?
This country is going straight to hell.
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Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.
Conventional pundit wisdom has it that the Republican midterm election sweep means the GOP Civil War between Tea Party extremists and the moderate business-oriented faction is over, and the moderates won. Charles Pierce disagrees:
“Joni Ernst is not a moderate. David Perdue is not a moderate. Thom Tillis is not a moderate. Cory Gardner — who spiced up his victory by calling himself ‘the tip of the spear’ — is not a moderate. Tom Cotton is not a moderate. And these were the people who flipped the Senate to the Republicans. In the reliably Republican states, Ben Sasse in Nebraska is not a moderate. James Lankford in Oklahoma is not a moderate. He’s a red-haired fanatic who believes that welfare causes school shootings. Several of these people — most notably, Sasse and Ernst — won Republican primaries specifically as Tea Partiers, defeating establishment candidates. The Republicans did not defeat the Tea Party. The Tea Party’s ideas animated what happened on Tuesday night. What the Republicans managed to do was to teach the Tea Party to wear shoes, mind its language, and use the proper knife while amputating the social safety net. They did nothing except send the Tea Party to finishing school.”
— Charles P. Pierce, EsquirePolitics Blog [links added]
Related:
“The Reasonable Extremists Among Us,” Jamelle Bouie, Slate
Image (“2014 Midterm Tea Party, after Sir John Tenniel”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.
With Tuesday’s midterm elections, the Republican Party has seized control of the U.S. Senate. Disgruntled voters decided to empower the party that crashed the economy, entangled the country in long and bloody foreign conflicts, and enriched the few at the expense of most Americans. Winning GOP Senate candidates, largely from the “establishment” Republican Millionaires’ Club, are expected to faithfully do the bidding of their billionaire funders.
More:
“Big win for conservative big money,” Kenneth P. Vogel, Politico
“Election 2014: A new level of collaboration between candidates and big-money allies,” Matea Gold, Washington Post
“Congressional Seats Sell for Record Four Billion Dollars,” Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
“New Horizons for the GOP Money Machine,” Ed Kilgore, Washington Monthly blog
Adulterous Nevada Republican John Ensign resigned his U.S. Senate seat before the Senate Ethics Committee issued a report that would have led to his expulsion. The last time the U.S. Senate expelled a member: 1862.
The Ensign ethics report is out, so add it to your summer reading list. Some may think it’s not a romance novel, but Mr. Ensign’s web of deceit involved a long-term affair with His Neighbor’s Wife (an employee and spouse of an employee), which he covered up with hush money drawn from campaign funds.
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