President Obama is already well on his way to remaking federal courts in the liberal image [1], but Reid insists this isn’t happening fast enough. The Senate Majority Leader is threatening again that he will break Senate rules to change the rules—so he can do anything he wants with the bare minimum number of votes (51).
This would mean effectively ending the use of the filibuster, Senators’ ability to speak at length against measures they oppose. That would be bad news, as this Senator explained:
Everyone in this chamber knows that if the majority chooses to end the filibuster—if they choose to change the rules and put an end to democratic debate—then the fighting and the bitterness and the gridlock will only get worse.
That Senator was Barack Obama, in 2005 [2], when his party was in the Senate minority.
But when you’re on top—as the Democrats are now in the Senate—the filibuster looks different. It looks like a speed bump. In fact, the filibuster actually protects the rights of all Senators—and of the American people [3] they represent.
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