Going Nuclear

by hilzoy

Tomorrow morning, the Senate is scheduled to begin the debate that could lead to the Republicans invoking the 'nuclear option'. I think that invoking the nuclear option would be a terrible mistake. I do not say this because of my views on the filibuster itself. I have tried to step back from current controversies and consider the filibuster dispassionately, and when I do, I find that I am much more strongly in favor of it in the case of judicial nominations than in other cases, both because, while legislation can generally be undone, judicial appointments are for life, and because what's at issue in judicial appointments is the constitution of a separate branch of government. For this reason, I would oppose removing the possibility of filibustering judicial nominations in any case.

For me, the biggest problem with the nuclear option is not that it would prevent Senators from filibustering judicial nominations, but that it would require breaking the Senate's own rules. And this is not just a problem for liberals. Here's what Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute has to say about it:

The Senate is on the verge of meltdown over the nuclear option, an unprecedented step that would shatter 200 years of precedent over rules changes and open up a Pandora’s box of problems in the years ahead. The shaky bipartisanship that holds the Senate together--in a way that is virtually absent in the House--could be erased. Major policy problems could be caught up in the conflict. The Senate itself would never be the same.

Let us put aside for now the puerile arguments over whether judicial filibusters are unprecedented: They clearly, flatly, are not. Instead, let’s look at the means used to achieve the goal of altering Senate procedures to block filibusters on judicial nominations.

Without getting into the parliamentary minutiae--the options are dizzying, including whether points of order are “nested”--one reality is clear. To get to a point where the Senate decides by majority that judicial filibusters are dilatory and/or unconstitutional, the Senate will have to do something it has never done before.

Richard Beth of the Congressional Research Service, in a detailed report on the options for changing Senate procedures, refers to it with typical understatement as “an extraordinary proceeding at variance with established procedure.”

To make this happen, the Senate will have to get around the clear rules and precedents, set and regularly reaffirmed over 200 years, that allow debate on questions of constitutional interpretation--debate which itself can be filibustered. It will have to do this in a peremptory fashion, ignoring or overruling the Parliamentarian. And it will establish, beyond question, a new precedent. Namely, that whatever the Senate rules say--regardless of the view held since the Senate’s beginnings that it is a continuing body with continuing rules and precedents--they can be ignored or reversed at any given moment on the whim of the current majority.

There have been times in the past when Senate leaders and presidents have been frustrated by inaction in the Senate and have contemplated action like this. Each time, the leaders and presidents drew back from the precipice. They knew that the short-term gain of breaking minority obstruction would come at the price of enormous long-term damage--turning a deliberative process into something akin to government by the Queen of Hearts in “Alice in Wonderland.”

Rule XXII is clear about extended debate and cloture requirements, both for changing Senate rules (two-thirds required) and any other action by the Senate, nominations or legislation (60 Senators required). Ignored in this argument has been Senate Rule XXXI, which makes clear that there is neither guarantee nor expectation that nominations made by the president get an up-or-down vote, or indeed any action at all.

It reads: “Nominations neither confirmed nor rejected during the session at which they are made shall not be acted upon at any succeeding session without being again made to the Senate by the President; and if the Senate shall adjourn or take a recess for more than thirty days, all nominations pending and not finally acted upon at the time of taking such adjournment or recess shall be returned by the Secretary to the President, and shall not again be considered unless they shall again be made to the Senate by the President.”

By invoking their self-described nuclear option without changing the rules, a Senate majority will effectively erase them. A new precedent will be in order--one making it easy and tempting to erase future filibusters on executive nominations and bills. Make no mistake about that.

I agree with Ornstein completely. This is serious business. So let me try to address some of the procedural issues involved.

What the Senate Rules Say: The Senate Rules are here. The relevant section is Rule 22, which reads, in part:

2. Notwithstanding the provisions of rule II or rule IV or any other rule of the Senate, at any time a motion signed by sixteen Senators, to bring to a close the debate upon any measure, motion, other matter pending before the Senate, or the unfinished business, is presented to the Senate, the Presiding Officer, or clerk at the direction of the Presiding Officer, shall at once state the motion to the Senate, and one hour after the Senate meets on the following calendar day but one, he shall lay the motion before the Senate and direct that the clerk call the roll, and upon the ascertainment that a quorum is present, the Presiding Officer shall, without debate, submit to the Senate by a yea-and-nay vote the question:

"Is it the sense of the Senate that the debate shall be brought to a close?" And if that question shall be decided in the affirmative by three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn -- except on a measure or motion to amend the Senate rules, in which case the necessary affirmative vote shall be two-thirds of the Senators present and voting -- then said measure, motion, or other matter pending before the Senate, or the unfinished business, shall be the unfinished business to the exclusion of all other business until disposed of.

This makes it clear that to close debate requires 60 votes, unless the filibuster is directed at a motion to change the rules, in which case it requires 67 votes. Clearly, if the Republicans do not have the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster of the judicial nominations, they do not have the 67 votes needed to break a filibuster of their proposed rule change. And that means that they will have to amend the rules in some way that does not allow for debate, for instance, by having Vice President Cheney rule that Rule 22 is unconstitutional or by proposing that the rule be changed, claiming as a point of order that further debate is dilatory and out of order, and then tabling any appeal. Both points of order and motions to table require only a majority vote to pass. However, neither was meant to allow a majority to impose its will in cases where a supermajority is called for. To quote Robert's Rules of Order on the motion to table (Art. V, sec. 28):

"The Object of this motion is to enable the assembly, in order to attend to more urgent business, to lay aside the pending question in such a way that its consideration may be resumed at the will of the assembly as easily as if it were a new question, and in preference to new questions competing with it for consideration. It is to the interest of the assembly that this object should be attained instantly by a majority vote, and therefore this motion must either apply to, or take precedence of, every debatable motion whatever its rank. It is undebatable, and requires only a majority vote, notwithstanding the fact that if not taken from the table the question is suppressed. These are dangerous privileges which are given to no other motion whose adoption would result in final action on a main motion. There is a great temptation to make an improper use of them, and lay questions on the table for the purpose of instantly suppressing them by a majority vote, instead of using the previous question, the legitimate motion to bring the assembly to an immediate vote. The fundamental principles of parliamentary law require a two-thirds vote for every motion that suppresses a main question for the session without free debate."

But Don't Judicial Nominees Have To Receive An Up Or Down Vote? Not according to the Senate Rules. There is no positive provision requiring that judicial nominees receive an up or down vote. Moreover, as Ornstein points out, Rule 31 explicitly provides for nominees' not receiving such a vote:

"5. When the Senate shall adjourn or take a recess for more than thirty days, all motions to reconsider a vote upon a nomination which has been confirmed or rejected by the Senate, which shall be pending at the time of taking such adjournment or recess, shall fall; and the Secretary shall return all such nominations to the President as confirmed or rejected by the Senate, as the case may be.

6. Nominations neither confirmed nor rejected during the session at which they are made shall not be acted upon at any succeeding session without being again made to the Senate by the President; and if the Senate shall adjourn or take a recess for more than thirty days, all nominations pending and not finally acted upon at the time of taking such adjournment or recess shall be returned by the Secretary to the President, and shall not again be considered unless they shall again be made to the Senate by the President."

But Doesn't The Constitution Require That The Senate 'Advise And Consent'? Well, I'm not a Constitutional scholar, and I'd be interested to hear from anyone who knows more about this than I do, but I would have thought the answer was: No. What the Constitution says is:

"He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law:" (Article II Sec. 2)

As I see it, what the relevant part of this means is: the President has the power to nominate judges and various other officials, but these nominations do not become appointments unless the Senate gives its advice and consent. That is: the Senate is not required to advise and consent; its advice and consent is just a condition of a nomination being successful.

To read it as requiring that the Senate "advise and consent", one would have to read the Constitution not as placing a condition on the success of appointments, but as instructing the President to nominate and the Senate to advise and consent. If one wanted to avoid the bizarre conclusion that the Constitution instructs the Senate to approve all the President's nominations, one would also have to read "consent" as meaning not "give permission for something to happen" (the Oxford US Dictionary on my computer) or "to give assent or approval" (Merriam-Webster), but as something more like "giving or withholding assent". This would be at odds with usage both now and in 1789, and would in addition make various other bits of the Constitution nonsensical. (Consider the Third Amendment: "No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law." On this reading of 'consent', the Third Amendment would mean: soldiers cannot be quartered in someone's house unless that person has agreed or disagreed that they can be quartered there. Consider the thrilling new interpretation of the claim that the police cannot search your house or your person without a warrant, unless you consent. Consensual sex would include rape, as long as the victim protested explicitly. The possibilities are endless.)

But there's another reason to think that the Constitution does not require the Senate to hold an up-or-down vote on nominees. Rule 22 was only adopted in 1917. Before that time, a single Senator (and, originally, a single Congressman) could filibuster, and as long as he held the floor, nothing else could be considered. This situation existed because of the Rules adopted by the first Senate in 1789. One Senator could also filibuster according to the Manual of Parliamentary Practice for the Use of the Senate of the United States written by Thomas Jefferson in 1800. From that work:

"It might be asked whether a motion for adjournment or for the orders of the day can be made by one member while another is speaking? It cannot. When two members offer to speak, he who rose first is to be heard, and it is a breach of order in another to interrupt him, unless by calling him to order, if he departs from it. And the question of order being decided, he is still to be heard through. A call for adjournment, or for the order of the day, or for the question, by gentlemen from their seats, is not a motion. No motion can be made without rising and addressing the chair. Such calls are themselves breaches of order, which though the member who has risen may respect, as an expression of the impatience of the House against further debate, yet, if he chuses, he has a right to go on."

The right of a single Senator to filibuster contains no exceptions for judicial nominees.

Now: Thomas Jefferson and the original members of the Senate were presumably familiar with the Constitution and its meaning. Had those who wrote, signed, and ratified the Constitution meant to require that the Senate vote on all nominations, they would presumably have said something about the early Senate rules, which permitted just such a filibuster. However, they did not. And for those who care about original intent, this should be evidence that they did not intend to require that all nominees, judicial or otherwise, receive an up-or-down vote.

And One More Thing: One other argument that the Republicans might make is that the Senate should not be bound by rules adopted by a previous Senate, citing the Constitution's claim that "Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings" (Art. I. Sec. 5). That passage of the Constitution is, I think, most naturally read to mean: Each House (i.e., the Senate and the House of Representatives)..., not (as this move would require): Each session of each chamber of Congress. (Even if one were, implausibly, to take 'a House' to refer to each session of the House, it is not at all clear why one would take this passage to cover the Senate.) The history of Senate rules suggests that this was not understood to be what the Constitution requires immediately after its adoption: Since its inception, the Senate has understood itself to be a 'continuing body', whose rules carry over from one session to the next, and they would hardly have done this had they believed it to be unconstitutional.

If the Constitution does not require that each session of the Senate craft its own rules, then the Senate is bound by its existing rules until it sees fit to change them. And its existing rules are quite clear on the subject. Rule 5 states:

"2. The rules of the Senate shall continue from one Congress to the next Congress unless they are changed as provided in these rules."

***

What Does All This Mean? It means, as best I can tell, that if Frist is successful with the nuclear option, he and those who vote with him will be shredding the Senate Rules and over two centuries of precedent. That precedent does not, according to me, mean that the Rules should never be changed; it does, however, mean that they should be changed in accordance with the established rules for doing so. Those are the rules that Frist et al are proposing to throw out the window.

Comments

[foo]

After reviewing the process that the filibuster would get killed in the case of judicial nominees it doesn't seem to me that there is any significant barrier to killing the filibuster in the general case.

I hate to sound like a catastrophist but this seems like it could be the end of constatutional democracy in America to me.

[Gary Farber]

The tricky question, Hilzoy, is what does one think of the Republican proposed action in the context of Senator Byrd's previous revisions of filibuster rules? Is there something inherently heinous in the Republican plan that wasn't there in the Byrd revisions? If there is -- and I'm perfectly open to argument on this -- I'm unfamiliar with it. But it would seem necessary to establish that point to be able to successfully make the point that the present Republican attempt is unique and so precedent-breaking in its methodology. (A secondary issue would be a careful examination of how universally precedent should always triumph when examining and judging the virtues and vices of Senate precedent; it's unclear that "it's a long-held precedent" implicitly or irrefutably leads to the conclusion "and it would be entirely wrong to change.")

[Anarch]

Is there something inherently heinous in the Republican plan that wasn't there in the Byrd revisions?

Wasn't the process completely different? I'm not completely up to speed on the Byrd revisions but I don't recall him trying to get the filibuster declared unconstitutional or, more generally, trying to revoke the rules under which the Senate operated by sheer force of chutzpah.

[foo]

I'm not aware of the details of Byrd's revisions (link?) but I would say categorically that changes to the senate rules outside of the established procedures are bad for America... regardless of which side of the aisle they come from.

[rilkefan]

More than you need to know about why the Byrd stuff is not germane.

[rilkefan]

... though note that dizziment is to be had in the comment section.

[ajay]

The Senate is on the verge of meltdown over the nuclear option, an unprecedented step that would shatter 200 years of precedent over rules changes and open up a Pandora’s box of problems in the years ahead.

Sounds like we are all about to be crushed under the jackboot of the fascist octopus.

[liberal japonicus]

jackboot of the fascist octopus.

Wow, that's four pairs of 'em!

[Slartibartfast]

I've only got two pairs of jackboots: the everyday ones, and the dress ones, which are owlhide and inset with diamonds mined by enslaved native Africans.

[Barry]

Each one with a differently shaped heel, to add to fun.

[votermom]

Moevon is running ads on tv in PA to call Arlen Specter and save the filibuster.

[Slartibartfast]

SAVE THE FILIBUSTER is, despite my feelings in this matter, not a bumper sticker you'll see on any of my fleet of Hummers.

[KCinDC]

Thanks for this post. Unfortunately, I have heard zero mention of any of this in the media's discussion of the nuclear option so far, and I seriously doubt I'll hear much more in the coming weeks. It's not a soundbite, so it's assumed (perhaps correctly) to be too incomprehensible for the audience.

[freelunch]

I'd love to trade the filibuster for a supermajority (60 or 67) on judicial nominations.

[votermom]

I've heard that people who buy hummers are comepensating for something. Maybe they should do a study to find out if that's true ...

[cleek]

I've heard that people who buy hummers are comepensating for something

given the price tag, i'd say they're trying desperately to get rid of burdensome income.

[Slartibartfast]

In actuality, I drive a Honda Accord, which I purchased less than a year ago to replace my aging Nissan Sentra. You might say I'm compensating for something; I've been considering the Mini Cooper.

[Andrew Frederiksen]

You don't need to be compensating for anything to consider a Mini -- those things are fun.

Not to drag this thread off toward things automotive, but -- hey, von, what did you end up buying, anyway?

[cleek]

this isn't about Constitutionality or precedent, this is about getting Good Conservative Judges appointed to undo the horrible crimes foisted on the American people by FDR and his followers. once that's taken care of, they can get back to caring about things like precedent.

really.

[Bernard Yomtov]

What it comes down to is:

Are there six or more decent Republican Senators who are not in thrall to the religious right, and are willing to ignore all the smoke being blown about non-existent Constitutional requirements and vote against Frist.

[notyou]

(A secondary issue would be a careful examination of how universally precedent should always triumph when examining and judging the virtues and vices of Senate precedent; it's unclear that "it's a long-held precedent" implicitly or irrefutably leads to the conclusion "and it would be entirely wrong to change.")

Agree completely, but then Jeffersonian Democrats are supposed to agree with this.

It's the conservative side that's supposed to be circumspect about uprooting tradition.

[Phil]

Heh.

[Gary Farber]

jackboot of the fascist octopus. "Wow, that's four pairs of 'em!"

I'd like to hope that everyone here has read the famous source of that line.

Thanks for the link to the arguments in your 03:45 AM, rilkefan, but I don't see most of them as definitive proof of the radical distinction the poster intends them as; YMMV, of course. (I also found the article as deeply annoying in format, in providing difficulty in determining who was being quoted where, and from what source, as I typically find the nigh-impenetrable format at DK, but that's tangential.)

"Moevon is running ads on tv...." Hey, they used to post here, didn't they? Albeit separately.

;-)

Myself, if it isn't clear, I hope the move to eliminate judicial filibusters fails, as I think it's a bad idea; however, if it succeeds, I look forward to the time when Republicans will wish they'd been more careful what they wished for.

I also think that while, obviously, most people making anti-filibuster arguments in this endeavor have been honestly reproducing what they believe is correct history, that many are misinformed, and yet others are outright, well, lying, with all the nonsensical false statements about how utterly unprecedented the Democratic use of the filibuster over judicial nominees is, and what a dreadful perversion of justice and fairness it is compared to the past behavior of the Grand Old Party. The entire demand that the Constitution requires an "up or down!" vote is crap, and whether it's phrased as an outright statement, or a strong implication, the notion that the Democrats are being horribly unfaired compared to past Republican behavior on judicial nominees would be hilarious if it weren't so desperately false.

So that's where I stand on that. However, this doesn't, in my view, mean that if the Republicans succeed, we're on the verge of Chancellor Palpatine becoming Emperor, the Republic will fall, and the changing of Senate precedent indicates it will. Neither does it mean that the present attempt to change the rules is as unprecedented, and so sheerly evil that only vile Republicans would ever do such a thing, as has been said at times; there's been a relatively small amount of Democratic handwaving and exaggerating here, as well, and I can't overlook it, although I won't over-state it, either.

That's all: I have spoken, you may carry on about your business now. (If anyone sees a column of stormtroopers headed for the Senate, though, do please post.)

[bob mcmanus]

"Are there six or more decent Republican Senators who are not in thrall to the religious right"

Do not assume you know all that is going on here. The fact that the White House wanted the Bolton nomination to come up first (see Steve Clemons to your left on the blogroll) leads me to believe judges aren't their top priority.

Once the filibuster is gone, it will be much easier to pass Social Security "reform" or declare war, should Bush get the urge.

Since Bush has been campaigning in Michigan lately, I wonder on the possibilities of Congress declaring itself the final arbiter of Constitutionality, declaring the current amendment process null & void, and making such changes as needed to allow Bush a third or indefinite term.

[Gary Farber]

"Since Bush has been campaigning in Michigan lately, I wonder on the possibilities of Congress declaring itself the final arbiter of Constitutionality, declaring the current amendment process null & void, and making such changes as needed to allow Bush a third or indefinite term."

We could make a bet on this, but if you won, things would be bad enough that you probably wouldn't enjoy collecting (and might not be around long after winning).

[Anarch]

SAVE THE FILIBUSTER is, despite my feelings in this matter, not a bumper sticker you'll see on any of my fleet of Hummers.

When you jackboot your octopus, make sure to put a filibuster on their Hummer.

...there's a sentence that's probably never been typed before in the history of the world. I feel so special!

[praktike]

well, here we go. Enter the Frist or Frist in Flight?

[hilzoy]

Whenever I feel gloomy, I remind myself not, like Julie Andrews, of my favorite things, but of things so bizarre that you really have to love a world in which they could possibly occur. And one of the ones I sometimes use is the original fascist octopus statement, which (if anyone doesn't feel like reading through the entire Orwell essay, which they should), is, drum roll please:

"The fascist octopus has sung its swan song."

Ya gotta love it.

[Anarch]

Yay C-SPAN! I can feel myself falling asleep already. Schumer's up right now.

[Anarch]

(if anyone doesn't feel like reading through the entire Orwell essay, which they should)

I make sure to read it every couple of months. It's the only way I can maintain any semblance of coherency in my political writings.

[hilzoy]

And, via TPM, Frist undercut his own argument this morning, not that it will make any difference.

"SEN. SCHUMER: "Isn’t it correct that on March 8, 2000, my colleague [Sen. Frist] voted to uphold the filibuster of Judge Richard Paez?"

Here was Frist’s response:

"The president, the um, in response, uh, the Paez nomination - we’ll come back and discuss this further. … Actually I’d like to, and it really brings to what I believe - a point - and it really brings to, oddly, a point, what is the issue. The issue is we have leadership-led partisan filibusters that have, um, obstructed, not one nominee, but two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, in a routine way."

So, Frist is arguing that one filibuster is OK. His problem is that several Bush nominees have been filibustered. This position completely undercuts Frist’s argument that judicial filibusters are unconstitutional. (Which is, in turn, the justification for the nuclear option.) If judicial filibusters are unconstitutional there is no freebee. But Frist digs his hole even deeper:

"The issue is not cloture votes per se, it’s the partisan, leadership-led use of cloture votes to kill - to defeat - to assassinate these nominees. That’s the difference. Cloture has been used in the past on this floor to postpone, to get more info, to ask further questions."

When Frist voted to filibuster Paez’s nomination it had been pending for four years. It’s hard to believe he couldn’t get all the info he needed or ask all the questions he had during that time. Make no mistake about it: Bill Frist was trying to kill the Paez nomination. A press release issued the following day by former Sen. Bob Smith, who organized the filibuster effort, read “Smith Leads Effort to Block Activist Judges.” " (I added some quotation marks, since the original uses blockquote to set off quotes, and I don't know wheterh blockquotes can be nested, or if so how to do it.)

[bob mcmanus]

Watching the Senate. Schumer saying this move will "remove the last vestige of comity or bipartisanship in the Senate."

I wish.

Gary:I lack the grandiose parts of paranoia, and the ideas of reference. Nobody is coming after me. I do think that by the time paranoia becomes empirically justifiable, it is usually too late to take defensive measure.

It was a thought experiment, trying to remember Bork's arguments about Congressional Supremacy. And imagining the worst scenario. And you are the one, I think, who would be surprised at how easily a coup would go.

[Gary Farber]

I tend to reread Politics And The English Language at least once every couple of years, so none of it, not just the memorable hits on mixed metaphor, fades too far in my mind. It's also a primary reason I hit so hard on the need for people to write clearly; it's not a luxury; it's not "the thought that counts," because the written thought can't be well expressed save in precise words and careful punctuation; sloppy writing is sloppy thinking, and typically vice versa. (No, I'm not remotely perfect in this; none of us are; but neither is this something that should be great effort, as opposed to learned habit.)

But all of the Collected Letters And Essays of Orwell are wonderful, too.

[Gary Farber]

"I don't know wheterh blockquotes can be nested..."

Yes.

"...or if so how to do it...."

Just repeat 'em.

Bob says: "I do think that by the time paranoia becomes empirically justifiable, it is usually too late to take defensive measure."

Yes. Note I didn't say you were crazy, wacko, paranoid, or irrefutably (at this time) wrong.

[hilzoy]

This is interesting: I reread 'Politic and the English Language' at least once a year, when I'm preparing for my annual dramatic reading of the part where he imagines some fusty academic trying to justify Stalin to my intro class, before their first paper. Usually more often.

Do you all know this guy? If not, you must -- MUST!!! -- read some of him. Possibly a good place to start is here, where he comments on this rather amazing bit of prose:

"Project WEY--Washington Environmental Yard (1972) is a manifestation of the intercommunal, process-oriented, interage, interdisciplinary type of change vehicle toward an environmental ethic from the school-village level to a pan-perspective. The urban focus of the project as the medium has been inestimably vital since it is generally speaking the message. Situated near the central downtown area of the city of Berkeley and a mere block from civic center, Washington Elementary School courts the thousands of daily onlookers/passersby (20,000 autos!) traveling on a busy boulevard with easy access to the physical transformation and social interactions (at a distance to close-up)--a virtual open space laboratory. It has served evocatively as a catalyst for values confrontation, even through a soft mode of visual/physical data exchange system. Since 1971, the dramatic changes have represented a process tool for the development of environmental/educational value encounters on-site/off-site, indoors/outdoors and numerous other bipolar entities and dyads. The clients represent a mirror of the macro-world just as the children and parents of the school reflect more than thirty different ethnic groups--as one of numerous dimensions of diversity."

And says, among other things: "If it were only a little bit less illiterate, it would seem to have been written by someone who had read deeply in Luther and even Nietzsche and had decided to sin boldly and to hell with Sklavenmoral." -- But that's before he really gets going on his vivisection, which is priceless. (And, now that I think of it, probably the model, in terms of tone, for my musings about my students' sentences.)

He is also quite good on the larger implications of bad writing.

[Anarch]

sloppy writing is sloppy thinking, and typically vice versa.

Interestingly, the same is true of mathematics: sloppy writing is often the result of sloppy thinking... and, invariably, sloppy writing can often produce sloppy thinking. I'd assume the same is true of other disciplines as well, irrespective of the language (natural v. artificial) used.

[liberal japonicus]

I'd like to hope that everyone here has read the famous source of that line.

Is there some emoticon that indicates that you are taking something to a meta level? The comment was interesting because it seems (I think) that ajay was complaining about the florid prose of someone _quoted_ by hilzoy. Does that mean that he disagrees with hilzoy or is he just pointing out the florid language? Orwell was very careful to point out that this was a problem in all political discourse, so when ajay deploys it here against one particular side, is it clarifying the choices or making light of the fact that some think the 'nuclear option'(which, as several have noted, seems to be a phrase created by the Republicans and foisted on Democrats) is a bad idea? In this case, going to the original source of the quotation seems to obscure what was meant more than it clarifies it.

[hilzoy]

LJ: I hadn't quoted Orwell in this post; I think Ajay was just riffing.

[Slartibartfast]

Never,

ever,

ever,

ever,

EVER nest blockquotes. And

if

you

do

, please un-nest them properly. Thangyou.

[Gary Farber]

"Do you all know this guy?"

I can't speak for anyone else, but in the "I'm well familiar with his writing," I've known him for a number of years (not in the "we've had personal contact" sense).

[Dantheman]

Norman Ornstein has a new post on the nuclear option, further demolishing the Republican arguments about the uniqueness of the current use of the filibuster.

[Anarch]

Just watched the first couple of speakers in the Senate debate, and it was... well... appalling. Schumer had dorky visual aids, true, but he and Feinstein had actual facts at their disposal. Jeff Sessions, aka Ranty McRantenstein, was factually incorrect on almost everything historical and wasn't much better when dealing with modern-day stuff. I eventually had to turn it off; there's only so much non-work-related (work-unrelated?) BS I can stand at a time.

[bob mcmanus]

Negotiations

Current news from someone who participated in a conference call with Schumer at lunchtime. It appears attempts at a compromise are still in play.

I do not approve. I realize the purpose is to retain the filibuster for upcoming Supreme Court nominations. But 1) Democrats should be intimidated into surrender on such a matter of principle; b) I believe it is tactically and strategically correct to move the Senate into a state of maximum rancor, and c) they are utter fools if they believe Republican Senators will keep their word in a SCOTUS fight.

[Tad Brennan]

Mr. McManus--
"1) Democrats should be intimidated into surrender on such a matter of principle"

did you want a "not" in there?

[bob mcmanus]

"did you want a "not" in there?"

Consider it done;thank you.

[bob mcmanus]

"Another blogger asked Sen. Schumer what the Democrats' response would be if they lost the nuclear option. Would they bring Senate business to a halt? Schumer said of course not, they would just use the Senate rules to attempt to wrest control of the agenda from the Republicans and push their own agenda instead." via Jeralyn Merritt

They sure talk purty. What I suspect this means is that Democrats start talking torture or healthcare on the Senate Floor, Frist comes by and asks:

"Can we vote on John Bolton?"
"Sorry, we are talking about health care."
"We really need a UN Ambassador."
"Got 60 votes?"
...
"Will the Senator from Texas yield?"
"I will gladly yield to further discuss John Bolton."
"Thank you. Now back to health care."

[marv wilde]

folks like senator schumer need to be voted out of office. how can the folks of the big apple think he is representing them and main stream AMERICA.