Metsfanmax wrote:patrickaa317 wrote:The appeals court judges are lifetime in length. On average, about 17% need to be replaced each term. Either way, these should still be subject to more than the executive branch and a simple majority in the Senate. The requirement that was lessened was the issue. It made the senate more of a mob rule than a representative republic.
It is fascinating how people describe majority rule as "mob rule" when it relates to something they don't like, and have little complaint when the same rules are applied for other things. What you're objecting to is two-party politics, not majority rule. The reason the supermajority is currently seen as important is because we happen to be in a political time where the majority party typically has between 50-55 votes. If there were four or five parties of approximately equal strength, would you really be saying the same thing? Probably not, because people are judging 60 vote cloture requirements relative to contemporary American politics rather than an absolute sense of what a good parliamentary system is.
I would never defend any party for suddenly changing something that had been in place for 226 years, especially when the same group people spoke about how bad of an idea it was just 8 years ago.
Well, I'm asking people to stop talking about party and focus on whether this is a good thing for democracy. I don't care whether people think the Democrats are good guys or bad guys for doing this. The point is that there's a problem -- filibusters are occurring for political showmanship rather than because the nominees are seriously objectionable -- and this is a solution. Is it the best solution? That's up for debate. But is the removal of the filibuster a net better thing for our country than leaving it in place? I think it certainly will be in the short term, because it will leave more time for congressional debate about policy and less time for partisan tactics.
Also, you're a little mistaken on the history. The filibuster was not used until 1841, and it didn't exist as a tactic when Congress first was created. In fact, several of the Founding Fathers
said some pretty negative things about filibusters:
A number of legal scholars have argued that the filibuster is unconstitutional. They note that the Constitution's framers did not intend to permit dilatory tactics that interfered with majority rule. James Madison, who's credited as the primary author of the Constitution, wrote in Federalist 58 that requiring more than a simple majority to pass legislation would violate "the fundamental principle of free government." "It would no longer be the majority that would rule," he explained. "The power would be transferred to the minority." In his "Manual of Parliamentary Procedure," which was officially adopted by the early Congress, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "No one is to speak impertinently or beside the question, superfluously or tediously."
Arguably, the filibuster contravenes the Framers' original constitutional design. The Constitution generally only requires a majority to take legislative action and specifically lays out where a supermajority is required (as in, for example, the requirement that two-thirds of senators vote to remove an officer impeached by the House). As the Supreme Court explained in the landmark case of Marbury v. Madison, where the Constitution enumerates exceptions to a general rule, those exceptions may be deemed the only ones legally available. In addition, the text also specifies that "a Majority of each [house] shall constitute a quorum to do Business." Today the filibuster requires 60 votes to do much of the Senate's business, such as enacting legislation or confirming judicial and cabinet nominees.
Just because filibuster was rarely used, doesn't mean the ability should be taken out. "Almost never used" means you are admitting it has been used in the past, probably for an extreme case. Would you be willing for someone to delete everything out of your house, computer, or phone just because you "almost never used it" over the last couple years?
The filibuster is one of many obstructionist tactics a minority can invoke if the majority does something really crazy. If the minority is using it when the majority is not doing something crazy, it is being misused. And if it uses it so much that it seriously threatens progress on actual problem-solving in Congress (the whole point of having a government), then it needs to go.
The only reason any party would want this removed is simply to get some extreme left or right wing people in place that are not ok with more than a simple majority.
That's just not supported by the facts. Many of President Obama's nominees have not been extreme left- or right- wing people yet they were filibustered just the same. Some evidence for this is that many of the nominees were eventually approved -- indicating that there wasn't a serious substantive problem with the nominees. There's reason enough to remove it because it's being used against people who are qualified and not extreme nominees.
I know this does not affect Supreme Court cases but a judicial nominee such as Robert Bork would be in place today rather than Anthony Kennedy (who is typically the tiebreaker of SCOTUS) if this was in place about 25 years ago. Would things really be better off to have an extreme partisan judge rather than one that is more middle of the road?
Robert Bork was not filibustered, and it was not even publicly considered. A discussion of his record occurred in the Senate hearings, as it's supposed to happen, and a majority of Senators (58) were opposed to him after the hearings. Several members of the Republican party voted against him. Now, there's lots of controversy related to those hearings and I'm not necessarily defending how it went down. But my point is that you don't need a filibuster to defeat an unpopular candidate. And you might say that since the Democrats had the majority they didn't need to filibuster Bork -- but at the time it was not completely obvious that Democrats would get more than 51 votes against Bork.
And it's especially important, in the context of today's politics, to remember that the Democratic Party is not nearly as uniform in voting patterns as the Republicans. If an extreme left-wing candidate were proposed for a court position, it's far from obvious that 50 Democratic votes would be acquired.
Night Strike wrote:Don't forget, they didn't just change the filibuster rules: they broke the rules of changing the rules in order to make that change. Changes to chamber rules during a Senate term (every 2 years) can only be changed by a 2/3 majority vote. The Democrats decided that a majority rule was good enough and used the parliamentarian (a Democrat) to "deem" the simple majority vote acceptable to change the rules.
Can you provide a source for that? I had been wondering how the Democrats removed the filibuster without getting filibustered :=D I know that Harry Reid has said in the past that he thought
67 votes were required to change this rule, so I'm wondering what changed his mind.
) This was a knockout blow to one of our most important traditions and basic principled beliefs at the core of what makes America what it is and has always been: that a majority cannot just run roughshod over a minority. Why the F would I have a discussion about that? It's like agreeing to have a discussion on whether my house is going to be burned to the ground. 
