Here's an excellent op/ed in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer from a law professor who's also the immediate past president of the American Society of Law Teachers:
. . .the Senate, with its constitutional mandate to adopt internal rules of procedure, has employed rules and practices over the past 200 years intended to ensure that a dominant political party -- at times the Republicans, at other times the Democrats -- does not run roughshod over the minority party.One such rule is the right of every senator to filibuster -- that is, the right to hold the Senate floor, talking hour after hour, day after day -- until a significant majority of senators (three-fifths or 60 members), not simply a bare majority, votes to cut him/her off (to invoke cloture). The purpose of the filibuster is to promote bipartisan compromise -- a bulwark against one-party rule, a conservative tool against the forces of extremism. Knowing that what goes around comes around, senators of both political parties have protected this right zealously.
By requiring a supermajority to end a filibuster, the views of a substantial minority cannot be blithely ignored. (And remember that the senators supporting a filibuster, though a minority, could well represent more than one-half of the population of the United States.)
That's really what the "nuclear option" is all about: elimination of the minority voice. If the minority has no voice in the elected body, then the United States as a republic is in serious danger. If your Senator is one of the Republicans on the fence (Susan Collins of Maine, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, John Warner of Virginia, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and John Sununu of New Hampshire, as reported by ABC News), I urge you to express your opinion via fax or phone call this week.
Via TalkLeft.
Posted by Linkmeister at May 14, 2005 09:55 PM