When the Senate is better than Sitcoms. - The Life and Thoughts of Zach — LiveJournal
Nov. 12th, 2003
10:55 pm - When the Senate is better than Sitcoms.
This is awesome. I just turned on C-SPAN2 to find out that the Senate is pulling an all-nighter.
The Republicans are trying to get the Democrats to fall asleep so they can sneak a procedural point by unanimous consent to end the filibuster against the 4 Bush judicial nominations. They called a 30 hour debate starting at 6pm tonight. They don't actually expect to succeed, they're just jerking the Dems around. It's beautiful in an obscure parliamentary chess playing kind of way. I love watching these people hate each other with so much politeness and "respect".
Barbara Boxer (D-California) and Charles Schumer (D-New York) are really on point in this debate.
Occasionally it is as fun to watch the Senate as it is to watch the British House of Commons.
Holy crap, these nominees ARE evil hyper-mega-conservative fuckers. Much props to the Dems for stopping this madness.
Right now they're spending the next hour debating the technical definitions of filibuster, cloture, and "hold". The Republicans are trying to suggest that filibusters against judicial nominees are unconstitutional and that they've never done one, they'd only instituted "holds". Hilarious. Tune it in if you get a chance. I imagine it'll be especially fun at about 4am when all the old people are feeling the most weary.
Are there any Republican women that don't wear power red like real estate agents?
gestalt shift
Red is and will forever be for me the Labour party, all that fraternal loyalty and righteous indignation. Blue is the true blue-blood Tories. It just seems all wrong the other way around.
Sorry, I realize this is a really random comment. I don't have anything more meaningful to contribute tonight.
Re: gestalt shift
I also love the protest mounted by the Democratic Senator from Nevada, who mounted an eight-hour filibuster by railing against the administration and reading several chapters of a book he'd written on his hometown. He's 64. I will still need him, I will still feed him.
Re: gestalt shift
Re: gestalt shift
In the movies, they are, by order of King George, blue or green--Sam Jackson had to "special-order" the violet one. The games, however, have a wider palette, and also offer them yellows and oranges.
Re: gestalt shift
Re: gestalt shift
It's gotten pretty boring though, no one is sniping like they were last night and this morning.
Watching Schumer and Specter duel around 11:30am or so was pretty exciting though.
[paraphrased]
Schumer [during his time]: Only the extreme radical right wing minority in this body would think that 168 judges confirmed and 4 judges blocked was unfair.
[half an hour later]
Specter [during his time]: Can I ask my honorable friend Senator Schumer if he considers this Senator [Specter] to be an extreme right wing radical?
[at this point I wanted to yell out..."Of course you are! You're exactly who he was talking about!]
Schumer: May I ask if my answer is going to be on your time?
Specter: Yes of course.
Schumer [paraphrased]: Well, my answer is, of course not. I think the honorable Senator Specter is a very levelheaded and standup guy but occasionally, for reasons I don't understand, he has lapses of reason.
[DAMN!]
The back and forth went on like this for about 10 minutes before the moderator (President) told Specter that he had to make a speech with his time, not just interogate Schumer.
Oh another cute part was where Senator Clinton (D-New York) made asked for unanimous consent that the senate stop debating about the judges and consider instead some much more important issue (don't remember which), immediately a republican asked that she amend her motion to include moving to an immediate vote on the blocked judges, Clinton rejected the amendment, so the republican objected to the unanimous consent, and the debate continued. It's so cute to see them going through the motions on this stuff. They know exactly what is going to happen but they've gotta get each other on the record rejecting forward progress so they can bitch about it later. Such a circus.
justice for judges - someone thinks they're very clever for thinking THAT up
President Bush, placing himself in the middle of a Capitol Hill judgeship talkathon that had members of the Senate debating through the night, demanded "an up or down vote" Thursday on appellate court nominees blocked by Democrats... These people deserve an up or down vote on the Senate floor," Bush told reporters. "And yet a few senators are playing politics and it's wrong and it's shameful. I will stand with them to the bitter end."
...About 2:45 a.m., Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., started reading from Robert Caro's "Master of the Senate," which examines former President Lyndon Johnson's career in the Senate.
..."I'm not participating in this, this marathon, talkathon, blameathon, whatever you want to call this. I'm not interested in that right now. I'm interested in the appropriations bill," said Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., who ironically is the owner of the No. 8 spot on the list of longest Senate speeches at 14 hours and 13 minutes. That was long ago against a civil rights bill.
..."Thirty hours on judges?" said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., at the Democrats' late-night rally. "There are 13 million hungry children in America tonight but Republicans don't have time to debate that."
For me, anyway.