How to Kill the Filibuster with Only 51 Votes

Under the Supreme Court's precedents, just 51 senators will have a brief opportunity to reform or eliminate the filibuster next January.

Let's face it, the GOP's "Party of No" strategy is working. Democrats lost a once-unlosable Senate seat to a no-name Republican last Tuesday. Progressive voters are depressed by the many pounds of flesh conservatives extracted from cherished priorities such as health-care reform. Right-wing voters are jubilant about the prospect of a government shutdown.

With conservatives salivating, and progressives seriously questioning whether American government is too crippled to solve major problems, it's difficult to imagine that Democrats won't take additional losses next November. Even if they don't, however, a minority bent on total obstructionism now enjoys the power to veto nearly any bill or nominee. With the exception of the annual budget, literally nothing is likely to pass the Senate for the next three years.

It doesn't have to be this way, however. A long line of Supreme Court decisions forbid former legislators from tying the hands of their successors. Thus, although current senators may choose to impose a supermajority rule on themselves, they cannot impose such a rule on a new Senate. Under the Supreme Court's precedents, just 51 senators will have a brief opportunity to reform or eliminate the filibuster next January -- but this opportunity will disappear if they do not act right away.

Israel's defense minister: Israel is an undemocratic apartheid state.

"The simple truth is, if there is one state" including Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, "it will have to be either binational or undemocratic. ... if this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state."

You idiots are being used.

Hey! That's our line!

These are people who’ve been gouged for years by the deregulated banking, mortgage lending, and commodities trading business, and when Obama sends down very weak, watered-down regulations to deal with those problems, they howl that he’s against “private enterprise” because that’s what they’ve been told to think by the Glenn Becks of the world.

Did you know that insider trading isn’t even illegal in the commodities trading business? Do you honestly think gas prices were high in 2008 because we weren’t drilling enough in the Gulf of Mexico?

You idiots are being used. Think for yourselves. If the Fox Network believes it so wholeheartedly, how could it possibly be in your interest? They’ll take your ratings, sure, so they can sell you Charmin and $5 footlongs. I mean, Jesus, how can you not see that? If you had real allies that powerful, don’t you think someone would have taken care of you by now?

The consensus of official Washington,

including many Democrats, the scribblers at Kaplan Test Prep Daily, the Great Minds at Very Serious Think Tanks, and guests at Sally Quinn's table dancing parties, is that torture is awesome, the rule of law only applies to Al Gore, Bill Clinton's penis, and all people who don't have important DC jobs, and all it takes to nullify the constitution is to call someone a terraist. I don't know how to change this, and electing the Hopey Changey guy didn't help much. I think they're playing Calvinbill a bit more fairly, but they're still playing it.

The Bill of Rights applies to everyone? Not just to Americans?

Who knew?

If corporations have 1st Amendment rights, you know one of the ten Bill of Rights,

Carry guns? Can they tried for murder? How does a corporation get a trial by jury? How do you send a corporation to jail? Can we tax corporations at the same rate as civilians?

Why cant a corporation run for office?

What they do understand is how to reference dominant narratives, which is easy because they're, you know, dominant and regularly parroted back to them

And that process is called Perception Management.

The Koran (Qur’an) expressly allows rulers to execute critics.

It must be good to hold power while claiming to speak for God. That makes repression and murder as a simple matter of divine judgment.

Dink Government of North Korea (supported by the Chink Government to the west) bombs the beautiful, honorable and sovereighn people of South Korea.

Isn't this why the US is building the F-35 and preparing for the beautiful, honorable and sovereighn people of South Korea people to take over the Nips?

Hey you. You there in the Glenn Beck T-shirt headed off to the Tea Party Patriot rally.

Fuck you, you fucking moron.

There is this creeping feeling that the Baby Boomers (Leno is 59) will never get out of the way.

How old is Chimpy?

neocons: always wrong, never any consequences.

“My poor son has got it wrong again,” Irving Kristol.

If corporations can enjoy full First Amendment protections, wouldn't they likewise get Second Amendment rights?

Since the Roberts Court has now ruled that corporations have the same rights as people and overturned decades of laws regulating their speech, I'm wondering: Do they now have the right to arm themselves by employing Blackwater-type mercenaries and post them all over their office buildings?

"Corporations have constitutional rights"

Justice Stevens wrote in the dissent, Congressman, "The framers took it as a given that corporations could be comprehensively regulated in the service of the public welfare." Why is it that judges are only called activists when they rule against what conservatives want?

GRAYSON: I wish I knew, but the same five judges today who have overturned 103 years of settled law and relied upon no precedent to do so, these are the same judges who gave us George Bush for eight years. They have their own agenda and it`s time we stopped pretending otherwise. The Supreme Court has become utterly politicized and the result of that is what you see here today.