Confused about the title? Good. You're a pretty normal type of person.
However, our American Senate is not composed of normal-type people. Not in the "normal" sense that I'm using. They're pretty weird. In fact, the American Political system is so filled with loopholes and crannies and ways to get around the rules that were set up by the Founding Fathers that its pretty likely that a bunch of the predecessors of our nowaday politicians were just as nutsy.
Which brings us to filibustering! Do you know what that means? I didn't really until today. I'd heard about it before, but I didn't quite understand the significance. Let's check out the definition:
filibuster [(fil-uh-bus-tuhr)]
A strategy employed in the United States Senate, whereby a minority can delay a vote on proposed legislation by making long speeches or introducing irrelevant issues. A successful filibuster can force withdrawal of a bill. Filibusters can be ended only by cloture.
In case that dictionary-speak wasn't quite clear (and it often isn't to me), I'll explain further.
Filibustering is when a politician or groups of politicians do not want a bill to pass or a legislation to go through the senate, and to keep the bill from passing or the legislation from going through, a Senator yaks a good long while and stalls. As the U.S. Senate has a policy of allowing its senators unlimited speech on a subject while they have the floor, no one can stop them.
Ridiculous, right? My mom heard tell of a politician that read the telephone book to stall. The telephone book! Seriously.
The longest recorded instance of filibustering in American History is by Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, when he filibustered for 24 hours and 18 minutes straight to keep a bill that prevented racial segregation from passing. That's pretty long, and to keep something good from happening. :(
There's a bright spot, though. In the definition above, the last sentence said that, "Filibusters can only be ended by cloture." Cloture is the bright spot. A Senator is allowed to call for a vote to reduce the time of the Senator who has the floor to one hour, and once the Cloture rule has been invoked the bill or legislation has to be resolved within 30 hours.
Unfortunately, Cloture can only be invoked fully if the vote the Senator calls for is passed by 60 votes, i.e. 3/5's of the Senate. Sad.
Confusing stuff, huh? Politics is like a tangled web. I've always thought that, in general, but I didn't realize that our system allowed Senators to get up and read out of a telephone book for something like 24 hours straight, just to get their way. It's sad.
Pray for our justice system and our political system; just our government in general!
Love,
Tina
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