Obama grows backbone, uses Recess appointments.

[The Guid]

Why is it seen as a bad thing that a leader of a country gets to pick the ministers? He's already in charge, it doesn't give him any more power surely?

[Teebs]

Why is it seen as a bad thing that a leader of a country gets to pick the ministers? He's already in charge, it doesn't give him any more power surely?

Well they inevitably have a degree of autonomy in the way that they work so it is an important power (that's not to say that I think the President getting to choose is bad).

[ShadowDragon8685]

It would be nice if there was a mechanism in place to force an up-down vote without requiring a stupid 2/3rds vote or whatever is required for cloture. But you might have to just repeal debate to do it.......

The best proposal I've heard is from a couple Senators themselves. On the first day of a filibuster, cloture is 60 (3/5ths of the Senate) as time goes by, that number drops until after 2 weeks you only need 51 Senators to end debate and call for a vote. This preserves the Senate's tradition of unlimited debate but still allows the majority to get things done. If you can win the debate in 2 weeks, awesome, if not you probably never will. 2 weeks is an eternity in modern politics

Okay... That's actually a good idea. It only lets the obstructionist pigs hold things up for so long, but if people want to genuinely still debate it still lets them hold on and debate.

Hope they get that put in posthaste. (Not that it'll ever happen, but...)

P.S. why the 2 and 1/3rd Ellipses?

I have a fully-automatic peroid key on my keyboard. It was a long burst.

[D.Turtle]

D.Turtle though, the problem is that the Fillibuster isn't exactly a "normal" operation of legislation.

There is no proviso whereby a disciplined group of minority voters are explicitly allowed to talk until their throats are hoarse, thereby preventing any action on a bill so long as their vocal chords and discipline holds.

They're abusing the basic nessessity of debate by holding endless "debates" within themselves while everyone else is sitting around getting frustrated.

The problem is what happens when you limit debate to avoid the filibuster; you risk the very real possibility of ramming through something without any debate whatsoever.

It would be nice if there was a mechanism in place to force an up-down vote without requiring a stupid 2/3rds vote or whatever is required for cloture. But you might have to just repeal debate to do it.......

Sorry, that is total bullshit. After cloture has been invoked the bill does not immediately go to a vote. Instead, what cloture does is limit further debate to 30 hours.

So yes, removing the filibuster (by lowering the required votes for cloture to 50 + VP or 51) will achieve exactly what you want it to, as all it does is limit debate, it does not remove it.

Actually, it still leaves quite a lot of room for useless bullshit tantrums by idiots like the Republican Senator Shelby, who put a hold on all appointments for some time, or what the Republicans did when they refused to allow committee hearings in the afternoon, etc.

[Darth Yan]

In all fairness, Obama regained some credibility by passing the bill. If he keeps it up, the dems will still hold a majority. One question though; how many republicans still support the birther theory? I remember the last time I was stateside I saw G Gordon Liddy advocating it on TV. Is it still strong or have the republicans conceeded that they have lost?

[Aasharu]

As far as I've seen, it's mostly just devolved into a sort of buzzword amongst the Teabaggers, something to mindlessly toss around in order to reassure themselves of their moral superiority. The people who believe it are already the nutcases, and the people who don't believe it aren't going to really be convinced by it any more.