{"id":72015,"date":"2013-11-21T20:35:17","date_gmt":"2013-11-22T01:35:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=72015"},"modified":"2013-11-22T12:20:45","modified_gmt":"2013-11-22T17:20:45","slug":"senate-reforms-filibuster-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/daily-astrology\/senate-reforms-filibuster-rules\/","title":{"rendered":"Senate Reforms Filibuster Rules"},"content":{"rendered":"

At 12:48 today by a 52-48 vote, the Senate changed filibuster rules, now requiring only a simple majority vote to end filibuster of certain executive and judicial nominees. This change ended the requirement for 60 votes — 3\/5 of the Senate — to end a filibuster on administration executive and judicial appointees, but will not affect any Supreme Court nominations, where 60 votes will still be needed to approve Supreme Court justice nominees.<\/p>\n

\"Caption.\"<\/a>
No sitting President since Eisenhower has had this much opposition to their decisions to allow a government to function at all, let alone facilitate the normal running of a government.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As pedestrian and simple a news story as a person jumping over a low bar, today’s small procedural change in the way the Senate does business is a momentous change in how our republic operates. Since 2009 when Barack Obama became President, the obstruction of executive branch nominees to fill positions in key federal agencies has been unprecedented, as evidenced in the chart shown.<\/p>\n

You might say what happened today has a Pholus-like feel: small event, big repercussions, like the push on the button that detonates a bomb. No wonder the filibuster rule change when first introduced in the earlier part of the last decade was nicknamed the “nuclear option.”<\/p>\n

George W. Bush certainly did not worry about having his judicial appointees blocked. Even then the Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist threatened a nuclear option when the then-minority Democrats were objecting to some of Bush’s appointees. But today we are in the era where the very structure of government is being challenged to the death. Daily.<\/p>\n

We’ve seen this already, time and again, most recently with the House Republicans instigating the shutdown that closed down the government in October. Today, it’s exemplified by Harry Reid’s Democrats taking the nuclear option to the Senate’s time honored filibuster.<\/p>\n

The filibuster was once a means to give the minority party a voice in decision-making, particularly the Senate’s advise and consent role in approving Presidential nominees for cabinet and judicial positions. However, consent has rarely been given for the Obama Administration, particularly judicial nominees, and the ongoing obstruction by minority party is severe enough to make you think there was no re-election of the President in 2012.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Add to that the opposition party is completely invested in making sure government does NOT work. And the racist undertones of the House of Representatives’ opposition to the Obama administration has furthered the rise in the spike of ignorance, racism and sexism in political dialogue since the 2010 midterms and the dawn of the Tea Party.<\/p>\n

Because of this rule change, the Senate’s Democratic majority can proceed with approval of President Obama’s three judicial nominees to the DC Circuit Court: Patricia Millett, Nina Pillard and Robert Wilkins.<\/p>\n

A friend of mine on Facebook said “I feel as though we are stuck in the middle of an hourglass — caught between the past and the future.” That rings so true, especially today, because we are caught dead center in the present with so much more to do.<\/p>\n

It feels like the time has come to move, grain by grain, name by name, to pass through that tiny needle in the Senate towards the future. Gravity is leading us to trudge heavily onward, but trudge we must, even if it means it hurts having to lift our feet up, one at a time, to go over that low bar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At 12:48 today by a 52-48 vote, the Senate changed filibuster rules, now requiring only a simple majority vote to end filibuster of certain executive and judicial nominees. This change ended the requirement for 60 votes — 3\/5 of the Senate — to end a filibuster on administration executive and judicial appointees, but will not … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72015"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72015\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}