Legislative Followups

Earlier this week, I did two supportive posts on some legislation being brought up in the Senate... a bill to restore habeas corpus rights for detainees, and one to give troops more time at home. Want to know how that worked out? Not well.

The vote on the habeas bill was 56-43 in support. The vote on the troop deployment time bill was 56-44 in support. Wait, you ask... doesn't that mean the bills passed? Hooray!

Actually, no, it doesn't. Because these weren't votes on the bills themselves, but rather votes on whether to "cut off debate"... aka, end the GOP filibusters. Republicans intended to prevent the bills from even being voted on (such courageous men). They succeeded.

(Note: On the troop bill, they proposed a symbolic counter-bill, but that also failed.)

The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum looks at the GOP's obsession with this filibuster tactic since Democrats took over last January. Looking at charts, he notes that Republicans are "obstructing legislation at three times the usual rate" of filibusters. He laments that the media reports ignore this, simply noting that the bills failed, but not why they failed.

A hopeful sign... the current version of the Reuters story up on Yahoo's main page (as of this writing) leads with this headline: "Senate Republicans block Iraq bill". It's a start.

[UPDATE: Holy shit on a stick, folks... After blocking substantive bill after substantive bill, the GOP did vote on and pass the anti-MoveOn bill. There are no words. Fuck you, GOP.]