more Kerry-Kennedy love: John Nichols on checks and balances

[ginnyinWI]

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=53470

Checks, Balances and the Duty to Filibuster


No one runs for the U.S. Senate on the slogan: "Elect me and I will maintain the status quo."

No one runs for the U.S. Senate promising to go along to get along.

Yet, when push comes to shove, most senators end up as cautious players who choose the easy route of partisanship, ideological predictability and personal political advantage over the more dangerous path of adherence to the Constitution. Americans have grown so accustomed to the compromised nature of the chamber that they often forget that the founders of the American experiment intended the Senate, in particular, to serve as a check and a balance on the excesses of the executive branch.

Unfortunately, major media outlets that now serve as little more than a stenography service for the D.C. consensus regularly reinforce this misinterpretation of senatorial duty by painting members of the body who choose to embrace their Constitutionally-mandated responsibilities as, at best, eccentric or ambitious and, at worst, vindictive or dangerous to the healthy functioning of the body politic.

The move, led by Massachusetts Senators John Kerry and Edward Kennedy, to block the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court with a filibuster is already being dismissed by White House aides, Republican operatives and their echo chamber in the media as a mad misadventure that exposes the Democrats as legislative anarchists bent on wrecking the smooth-functioning processes of the Senate. The Republican National Committee's Tracey Schmitt summed up the sentiment when she peddled the official line of the man who would be monarch, arguing that in George W. Bush's America the Senate's advice and consent responsibilities are no longer required.

more....

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[Blaukraut]

1. very good article

I especially like this paragraph;

'Seen in the context of the threat that Alito poses, the use of the filibuster -- an entirely legitimate legislative tool -- to block Alito's nomination is not "bomb throwing." It is an appropriate and necessary embrace of duty by senators who recognize the entirety of their advice-and-consent mandate. Of course there will be political risks for those who back the filibuster. But senators do not swear allegiance to their political security; they swear it to a Constitution that requires them to hold the executive branch to account. In this moment, and in this circumstance, senators can only provide the necessary checks and balances by backing the filibuster.'

How many of them have already forgotten what they swore to do - uphold the constitution. I'm glad that JK and Teddy still remember :-)

[whometense]

2. That may be a first!!

If they come all the way around I may change my mind about renewing my subscription!!

[ProSense]

3. Good article.

There really is no excuse to play it safe here. Anyone who has a basic understanding of politics should be able to see that.

[ginnyinWI]

4. JK's thrown down the gauntlet

Those too cowardly to stand up for their beliefs really have only themselves to blame. Not the way Washington usually works, but the way it should work.