As a libertarian, I heartily agree with the premise of this article.

We should remember that all laws involve the use of force. Letting 50 percent plus one vote dictate to 50 percent minus one vote is a recipe for the tyranny of the majority. With the filibuster, a significant minority can (and should) put the brakes on bad legislation.

Historically, the House has also operated under the three-fifths cloture rule. I think it would be a good thing if they brought it back.

In fact, I believe that, if you can’t get three-QUARTERS of the legislature to agree on a proposed bill, then it should not become law. Since laws are acts of force, they should not be enacted unless it is obvious to an overwhelming majority that the law makes sense.

As a corollary, I also believe strongly that all laws should include a Sunset Provision; they should automatically expire after (for example) five years, unless renewed by both houses and the president. If, after five years in effect, it is not obvious the law is beneficial, it should automatically expire.

A further benefit of Sunset Provisions is that they would force Congress to perform an important, though neglected, function: oversight of the laws.

The author undoubtedly also prefers the Electoral College to plurality voting. 

After all, we can’t let “the masses” (aka the unwashed millions) decide things for themselves, can we ?

Horrors !!

I think that the filibuster, COMBINED WITH THE UNDEMOCRATIC NATURE OF THE SENATE (i.e., with Wyoming residents having 69 times the representative influence as California residents) renders that body anathama to a democratic republic.

It’s bad enough when the populations of the small population states already have the nation at their mercy under the Constitutional 2-senator per state plan.  But then add to that an even smaller proportion of the population, through just 41 of those senators with a filibuster, and we have failure, pure and simple.

I realize that some large population states have joined this regressive minority coalition (Texas, etc.), but all in all, the real problem is a long-term, systemic tyranny of a political minority.

As I see it, gridlock is a good thing; there’s an old saying, often attributed to Daniel Webster or Ambrose Bierce, which goes: “No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the Legislature is in session.” That goes for women, too.

When has the filibuster ever been used positively? What vulnerable minority was ever protected by it? Sure, Democrats filibustered a very few judicial nominees, but did they ever filibuster a Supreme Court nominee? Samson has given a short list of all the shit Democrats didn’t filibuster, and history tells us that it is used primarily to screw over the dispossessed—think of the constant filibustering of civil rights bills.

End the filibuster; the only minority it ever protected was the powerful.

Things the Democrats could have filibustered, but didn’t.

-Bush’s tax cuts for the rich
-The Patriot Act, and all its constant extensions
-The giving of immunity to both Bush and the telecoms for illegal domestic spying.
-The Afghan war
-The Iraq war
-funding for the wars during any year
-bloated Pentagon budgets
-Justices Roberts and Alito, two of the five votes who just made corporations more powerful than citizens in elections.
-The appointment of Gonzales as AG.

Just remember, the Democrats willingly refused to block, and thus basically approved, pretty much everything that everyone here hated about the Bush years.

Bush never had enough Republicans in the Senate to have a ‘filibuster-proof’ majority.  Of course, he never needed it with the Democrats being such willing partners.

The problem with the filibuster is that only one ‘side’ uses it.

When you see the Republicans blocking whatever Obama wants to do, remember the Democrats could have similarly blocked whatever Bush wanted to do.

For instance, if the Republicans can block the ending of a war, the Democrats could have blocked the beginnings of a war.

The key to understanding the Bush years is to realize that the Democrats were willing partners with Bush.

There’s nothing wrong with the filibuster being there to protect political minorities from being steamrollered by a majority.  The problem is that one of our two supposed ‘sides’ never blocks the other.  The problem is that with only one real party in DC, the blocking only goes in one direction.

The filibuster creates political gridlock. Its effect is to prevent clear, coherent reform of any kind, so that the only legislation that gets passed is that which has been mangled and distorted with compromises and buy-outs.

What if the Republicans had been able to pass their more radical proposals in the face of a Democratic minority five years ago? At least the people would have had the opportunity to see, clearly, what the Republicans stand for and what the effect of their policies would be. At least they could decide clearly between coherent alternatives.

With the filibuster, because clear, understandable proposals like universal single payer healthcare have no chance of passing the Senate, instead we get insanely complicated and unpopular pieces of garbage like the (hopefully now dead) Senate bill, and voters who overwhelmingly support a public healthcare option have no way to express their frustration with a notionally Democratic controlled Senate except to go out and vote for, of all things, a Republican from Massachsetts.

How ridiculous is that?

Regarding the claim “It is no accident that the Senate health care bill is better than
its House counterpart.”.

Really? I don’t recollect reading here a reasonable case being made for the
Senate’s effort being better than that from the House.

While it does prevent the majority from ignoring the minority, How would a simple majority result in more partisanship than we have now?  The Senate is not just gridlocked, it is frozen almost to the point of being completely useless.  The other factor that is fustrating is that if people wanted change, having a majority (50% or 60%) won’t get it.  Good or bad.

The other factor is the lobbying of both parties to ensure that no popular policy ever gets passed.  Given, that filibustering never realy ever changes the final outcome, Democrats need to just call the minority’s bluff.  After a few weeks of the Congress being shut down, the public will force the issue.

The filibuster is very effective in stopping all legislation. The Republicans are in the minority but they still control Congress. It must be nice to say the Democrats are the majority but aren’t in control. The Republicans march lock step together to stop progress. And a few Democrats supported by corporations seem to be able to join when needed.

Because senators are mostly a lazy lot, Ron—they don’t like working late hours and weekends, as they would if the filibuster were more common.

As I see it, the filibuster is not that useful a weapon nowadays because the Senate no longer represents the interests of the states at large; therefore, I believe in repealing the 17th Amendment and restoring election of senators to the state legislatures and not by the people of the states. The 17th is one of the instruments that has helped make the US government so highly centralized—and a centralized government is a warlike government that can easily ignore the wishes of its people and engage in “perpetual war for perpetual peace”.

Anything that cuts back on centralization of power is a good thing; to quote Tolstoy—“The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded. Therefore, if we really wish to be what we profess to be, we must not only cease our present desire for the growth of the state, but we must desire its decrease, its weakening, and help this forward with all our might.”