The "Nuclear Option"......The end of the Senate Filibuster?

[serryjw]

quote.......
What emerged at that meeting was an order of battle that could mark American politics for years. Reid told the participants that he had learned from friendly Republican senators that Bill Frist, the majority leader, intended to push forward with what has come to be known as the "nuclear option," a fiddling with Senate rules that would block filibusters of judicial nominees.
And if the principle at stake is "majority rule," consider that the Senate is, by its very nature, an affront to majoritarian principles. The 52 senators from the nation's smallest states could command a Senate majority even though they represent only 18 percent of the American population.
end quote.....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55429-2005Mar21.html Sorry you have to register to read the entire thing

[BrklynLiberal]

1. The Caligula Moment

They are all totally insane!!!!!!!!!!!!


From Dave T at: www.upsizethis.org


Text : The question for the day is WHY?

Why would the Republicans in Congress pick up the banner of Terri Schiavo when a whopping 70% of the public sees through the posturing and opposes the idea of making a Federal case out of this personal tragedy?

An ABC News poll taken Sunday showed strong opposition to the law; 70 percent of those polled said Congress should not have gotten involved. And by a margin of 67 percent to 19 percent, most Americans think Congress acted more for political advantage than out of concern for Schiavo or for the principles involved.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/CSM/story?id=601610


The most obvious rationalization is that Tom Delay and W. Bush pin their hopes for further domination of American politics by maintaining the rabid support of the religious fundamentalists who get animated by a buzz phrase like "culture of life." It is impossible not to notice the massive psychological denial coming from these people who love guns, the death penalty and starting wars of revenge. Take a look at the trailer for Passion of the Christ and you realize that you are dealing with a cult of death which exalts the word of "life" as an oppositional fetish.

The braindead body of Terri Schiavo represents the pure abstraction of life without any of the attributes of real life -- exactly like their more familiar totem of lifeless life, the fetus.

To the rest of us life is activity, interaction, experience, motion. To them life is an abstraction to be deduced from sacred texts -- "life begins at conception" is a doctrine based on pure ideation. Neither the fetus nor Terri acts, creates, communicates or loves. Each exists in a realm indistinguishable from actual death -- which is why the Cult of Death worships before them.

This is the fault line between the fundamentalist minority and the enlightenment influenced majority: the fundamentalists angrily deny that life is a function of experience; to them, life is a function of the Word of God.

Make no mistake about it. This is a narrow minority of superstitious buffoons who obsess over the living corpse of Terri Schiavo. They now vote about 80% Republican (actually I believe that they vote about 140% Republican when the votes get counted, but that is another story.)

Yet Tom Delay and his underling George Walker Bush have confidently played to this idiot fringe without any apparent fear of reprisals at the polls.

Why?

For me, it is That Caligula Moment. Delay is testing his power now that all the fonts of actual power are under complete control. Just as Caligula appointed his horse as Consul, Delay is now putting the entire Federal Government in the harness of the goofiest extremity from the Religious Right. He is daring the Secular Humanists and the Liberal Elite to call him insane.

http://www.roman-emperors.org/gaius.htm

If he can get away with this caper, he can get away with anything.

I wish I was kidding.

[LittleClarkie]

2. It's alittle too weird for me that they're trying to tie a braindead woman

together with a fetus, as if the fetus was dead. That's just stretching an idea way to far out of shape. I could consider the idea that a fetus is the idea of life without having actualized it yet, but I can't make the leap that both Terri and a fetus exist in the same realm. The fetus still has potential while Terri apparently doesn't.

[Silverhair]

3. Can't we have a thread that NOT about Terri Schiavo?

The OP had NOTHING, NOTHING to do with her, yet the first response is completely about Terri Schiavo. If one looks at the lists of posts, there are many Schiavo threads. It isn't as if the issue wasn't being talked about here.

So a thread about the filibuster rules is instantly turned into a Schiavo thread.

AAAAAGGGHHHH!!!!!!!!

[obreaslan]

4. Let's get this back on track.....

The Repugs must be crazy to think that they wouldn't be shooting themselves in the foot by doing this. They won't always be in the majority (hopefully that will be fixed in 2006), and it would be stupid to remove this option from the Senate rules. hopefully the American people will wake up and shoot this absurd notion down like they have done to the Social Security trashing and the Terri Schiavo grandstanding. The Sheeple are waking up to see the wolf in the field, and they are starting to get nervous. You can almost feel this in the air.

BTW, I know I mentioned her, but I am trying to steer this back to the OP. :)