Off the subject, but a great preview of tomorrow’s testimony.

http://www.salon.com/ent/video_dog/latenight/2006/02/09/gonzales/index.html

I'd like to know why the Democrats didn't pull this stunt when they were in the minority. It seems the minority party has more power than we were told then.

I'd like to know why the Democrats didn't pull this stunt when they were in the minority. It seems the minority party has more power than we were told then.

I say it's one of my senators - bMitch McConnell or Dumb Bunning.

our government is so dumb. i take partial responsibility.

The anonymous hold irks me in the backside of my shorts . . . This is ludicrous. The anonymous hold only supposes that the Senator will filibuster the bill during a debate so it gets tabled. The Senate needs to place the bill before the whole Senate for debate – Let the idiot spout until he/she/it drops then vote on it.

Senators need to have the fortitude to publicly own their positions . . . That’s what we pay them for . . . Expressing their opinions . . . Heck, that is what the filibuster is farging for!

Paul: The Secret Hold, once the signal of an upcoming filibuster but now just an extortion tactic, is part and parcel of the Senate's deeply imbedded anti-democratic (small d) procedures.

The U.S. Senate is just as tyrannical an oligarchy as the Roman one Sen. Byrd so worships.

Remember: the Founding Fathers designed the Senate to be a ruling-class check on the too-democratic House (two per state regardless of population, appointed not elected, six years instead of two, etc.)

The anti-democratic nature of the Senate is a big reason the Electoral College so skews elections. I say get rid of them both.

Yawn. People seem very ill-informed about the workings of their own government, yet quite ready to go on a rampage whenever fired up by an inflammatory article, why is that?

The house, senate, and any government body has a set of rules that it abides by - procedures for getting legislation on the agenda, for sending it through committees, for debating it, for voting on it, and so forth. When someone moves to do something "by unanimous consent", they're basically saying screw all the rules, forget all the procedures, let's just do this thing right now. And yes, that can be done if there is "unanimous consent" to suspend all the rules, i.e. if every single member of the body agrees.

So in this case Feinstein tried to push something through without going through channels and without following the rules, and someone objected, and now folks are all whining about the anonymous objector. Why not whine about Feinstein for not putting it through the proper process? That would actually make more sense. But it's likely that her goal was to generate a headline rather than to actually get something done.

It was Stevens. Check it out here http://porkbusters.org/secrethold.php.