We all remember the unprecedented obstruction by a minority in the Senate against allowing President Bush's judicial nominees an up or down vote. The filibuster, that fine Senate tradition, had never before been used as a systematic tool to obstruct the majority. And the federal judiciary is still deprived of many justices who have waited years for a vote.
So we find it a bit amusing that all of a sudden Democrats who created that unprecedented stalemate are complaining about obstruction by Republicans in the Senate. Democrats are trying to insist that only resolutions critical of President Bush and his surge of troops in Iraq should be brought to a vote. Republicans have a number of alternative resolutions to offer, which may attract a larger majority than the asinine, defeatist resolutions Democrats prefer.
And of course Democrats are fit to be tied that their effort to deny the minority a voice is being obstructed:
"It's obstructionism," said Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. "This is not tolerable in a situation where it's the number one topic in the nation, and the Republican party prevents the Senate of the United States from debating."
Well cry me a river!
“This obstruction is an abdication of their responsibility to the American people on the most important issue facing our nation today,” Democrat Leader Harry Reid said in a statement.
Boo hoo!
Shall we remind Democrats what their anointed "conscience of the Senate" the former Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan had to say regarding obstruction in the Senate?
Remarks by Senator ByrdThe shoe's on the other foot and the same folks who were FOR filibusters are now voting AGAINST them.
Floor of the U.S. Senate
March 1, 2005
...The Senate was never intended to be a majoritarian body. That was the role of the House of Representatives, with its membership based on the populations of states. The Great Compromise of July 16, 1787, satisfied the need for smaller states to have equal status in one House of Congress: the Senate.
The Senate, with its two members per state, regardless of population is, then, the forum of the states. Indeed, in the last Congress, 52 members, a majority, representing the 26 smallest states accounted for just 17.06% of the U.S. population. In other words, a majority in the Senate does not necessarily represent a majority of the population. The Senate is intended for deliberation not point scoring. It is a place designed from its inception, as expressive of minority views. Even 60 Senators, the number required for cloture, would represent just 24% of the population, if they happened to all hail from the 30 smallest states. Unfettered debate, the right to be heard at length, is the means by which we perpetuate the equality of the states.
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The Senate was deliberately conceived to be what he called a “better refuge,” meaning one styled as guardian of the rights of the minority.
The Senate is the “watchdog” because majorities can be wrong, and filibusters can highlight injustices.
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Will all debate soon fall before majority rule?
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But witness how men with motives and a majority can manipulate law to cruel and unjust ends. Historian Alan Bullock writes that Hitler’s dictatorship rested on the constitutional foundation of a single law, the Enabling Law.
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Without the filibuster or the threat of extended debate, there exists no leverage with which to bargain for the offering of an amendment.
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In such a world, the Minority is crushed; the power of dissenting views diminished; and freedom of speech attenuated. The uniquely American concept of the independent individual, asserting his or her own views, proclaiming personal dignity through the courage of free speech will, forever, have been blighted. And the American spirit, that stubborn, feisty, contrarian, and glorious urge to loudly disagree, and proclaim, despite all opposition, what is honest and true, will be sorely manacled.
Yes, we believe in Majority rule, but we thrive because the minority can challenge, agitate, and question. We must never become a nation cowed by fear, sheeplike in our submission to the power of any majority demanding absolute control.
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