Had My Fill, Buster 0
Dick Polman comments on the Senate’s rule change on the filibuster.
Two nuggets:
(snip)
And nowhere in the Constitution – not in a phrase, not in a syllable, not even implicitly – does it empower a Senate minority to block those nominees. In fact, founding fathers James Madison and Alexander Hamilton specifically warned in the Federalist Papers that tyranny of the minority would be a bad thing. They said that requiring a Senate supermajority (anything more than 51 votes) should be limited to the real big stuff, like ratifying a treaty or convicting an impeached president or ousting an elected official for criminal behavior.
As Polman points out elsewhere in the column, the Republicans own obstructionism made this happen.