Both Republican and Democratic Senate cloakrooms have catheters
This is nothing new... it has almost always been the case... certainly back to the 1920s and probably to before the Civil War (Though the old-style would have been a lot cruder)... about however long the cloture rules have existed.
When planning a serious filibuster you strap a pee-bag to your leg. That is how the game is played.
Surely nobody thought otherwise (???) and believed that folks back in the day could hold it for 24 hours... 36 hours...
In response to a question, Rand Paul revealed that he considered using the catheter but decided not to. (Which suggests he never planned to keep at it all that long.)
Responses to a story about the catheter in LBN were so uniformly ignorant on this point that it suggested to me that I thought a general note was in ordering reminding us of our history.
Using a catheter (or other unconventional urine capturing device/protocol) for a filibuster is a long-standing (so to speak) and bipartisan American political tradition.
(And yes, some early astronauts were instructed to pee in their suit during delayed countdowns. The absense of bathrooms and elimination in old movies was conventional, not documentary.)
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