My apologies -- I appear to have gotten confused about what Monday's "Cloture" vote on the Kennedy-Bush immigration bill in the Senate did. I assumed it was to prevent a filibuster by 41 Senators, like most cloture votes, but instead it was to allow this monumentally important and complex act to not go through committee hearings like most legislation does. It would require a second cloture vote by at least 60 Senators to shut down a filibuster. Harry Reid than added a second week to the debate, admitting that his original plan to hustle this bill with its vast and murky consequences through in one week was too grotesque even for the Senate.
My thanks to a couple of my commenters and to Larry Auster for clearing this up.
No thanks at all to the Main Stream Media for ignoring this crucial facet of the proceedings so that all my Google News searches on "cloture" early Saturday didn't uncover the facts. Using a cloture vote to avoid committee hearings on this bill was a shameful act by the political elite, but the MSM deeply approves of chainging immigration laws in Red Bull-filled rooms far from the prying eyes of the public. That would be "divisive."
My thanks to a couple of my commenters and to Larry Auster for clearing this up.
No thanks at all to the Main Stream Media for ignoring this crucial facet of the proceedings so that all my Google News searches on "cloture" early Saturday didn't uncover the facts. Using a cloture vote to avoid committee hearings on this bill was a shameful act by the political elite, but the MSM deeply approves of chainging immigration laws in Red Bull-filled rooms far from the prying eyes of the public. That would be "divisive."
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
I'm still shocked that Washingtonwire ruthlessly censored my perfectly relevant comments about their failure to cover the initial cloture vote (they instead posted a bit on immigration dove Janet Napolitano's initial reaction to the bill after a cursory half reading). After all, washingtonwire is supposed to be ahead of the curve, with their 40 washington contributors. It was my first thought when I went looking for more depth on the cloture issue. Not all wsj blogs are bad: dealjournal is relevant and intelligently written.
ReplyDeleteThanks for clarifying, patron. One reason I come back here is I trust you to correct errors.
ReplyDeleteThe take home message, I guess, is that I should calling and faxing my Senators, because there's another crucial cloture vote.
The aconstitutional 60 vote senate supermajority, which I suppose is binding to the extent ratified in each Congress, is a fantastic preventative of govt. excess (about a year ago the journal eds. were calling for Republicans to trammel it and Bill Frist was threatening to end it). why has it survived for so long (80 years or something)?
ReplyDeleteAs long as we have Larry on the line, why is it that the Bird Amendment isn't unconstitutional, to the extent it binds future (is it Senates?) to its seemingly constitutional terms ("you, future senate, can only reduce taxes for 10 years) but resulted from a mere majority vote rather than the amendment process? has the constitutionality of the amendment ever been challenged, or did it have some feature which necessitates its readoption each term?