History of Filibusters...

As I've said before, I love history. It's an opportunity to see what has happened and many times what is happening right now has been done before. Most times we as humans don't seem to learn lessons from the past so we are doomed to repeat them.

Let's flash back to 1841 for a moment.....

In 1841, when the Democratic minority hoped to block a bank bill promoted by Henry Clay, Clay threatened to change Senate rules to allow the majority to close debate. Thomas Hart Benton angrily rebuked his colleague, accusing Clay of trying to stifle the Senate's right to unlimited debate.

The term "filibuster," comes from the Spanish filibustero, or freebooter, meaning "pirate." Which is what basically happens, one or more persons "pirates" the floor. There are even rules that outline what can be done during a Filibuster, for instance you can drink water or milk but not eat.

Both republicans and democrats have used the filibuster and when in the majority tried to change the rules for filibusters. The party in power seems to always want to stifle the dissent of the minority. Republicans are now in power, and they seem to have forgotten some of their history. Claims have been made that a filibuster has never been used to stop the appointment of a Judge, not true. Sept. 26, 1968, Washington Post; it said, "A full-dress Republican-led filibuster broke out in the Senate yesterday against a motion to call up the nomination of Justice Abe Fortas for Chief Justice." A New York Times story that day said Fortas's opponents "began a historic filibuster today." As the debate dragged on for four days, news accounts consistently described it as a full-blown filibuster intended to prevent Fortas's confirmation from reaching the floor, where a simple-majority vote would have decided the question. The required number of votes to halt a filibuster then was 67; filibusters can be halted now by 60 of the Senate's 100 members.

If you want to read more, some good articles/sites:

Washington Post article

Slate article

Senate Filibuster History

Liberal, Libertarian...how do you define it?

Like most "labels" it depends on the source:

According to Funk and Wagnall's Dictionary:

lib-er-tar-i-an, n. 1. a person who advocates liberty, esp. with regard to thought or conduct.... advocating liberty or conforming to principles of liberty.

According to American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.

NOUN: 1. One who advocates maximizing individual rights and minimizing the role of the state.

The Challenge of Democracy (6th edition), by Kenneth Janda, Jeffrey Berry, and Jerry Goldman:

Liberals favor government action to promote equality, whereas conservatives favor government action to promote order. Libertarians favor freedom and oppose government action to promote either equality or order.

According to Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2000 © 1997-2000 Microsoft Corporation:

Libertarianism, political philosophy emphasizing the rights of the individual. The doctrine of libertarianism stresses the right to self-ownership and, by extension, the right to private ownership of material resources and property. Advocates oppose any form of taxation and favor a laissez-faire economic system.

According to Libertarian.org:

While libertarians are a diverse group of people with many philosophical starting points, they share a defining belief: that everyone should be free to do as they choose, so long as they don't infringe upon the equal freedom of others.

According to David Boaz, Libertarianism: A Primer, Free Press, 1997:

Libertarianism is the view that each person has the right to live his life in any way he chooses so long as he respects the equal rights of others. Libertarians defend each person's right to life, liberty, and property-rights that people have naturally, before governments are created. In the libertarian view, all human relationships should be voluntary; the only actions that should be forbidden by law are those that involve the initiation of force against those who have not themselves used force-actions like murder, rape, robbery, kidnapping, and fraud.

According to Charles Murray, What It Means to Be a Libertarian, Broadway Books, 1997:

The American Founders created a society based on the belief that human happiness is intimately connected with personal freedom and responsibility. The twin pillars of the system they created were limits on the power of the central government and protection of individual rights. . . .

A few people, of whom I am one, think that the Founders' insights are as true today as they were two centuries ago. We believe that human happiness requires freedom and that freedom requires limited government.

The correct word for my view of the world is liberal. "Liberal" is the simplest anglicization of the Latin liber, and freedom is what classical liberalism is all about. The writers of the nineteenth century who expounded on this view were called liberals. In Continental Europe they still are. . . . But words mean what people think they mean, and in the United States the unmodified term liberal now refers to the politics of an expansive government and the welfare state. The contemporary alternative is libertarian. . . .

Libertarianism is a vision of how people should be able to live their lives-as individuals, striving to realize the best they have within them; together, cooperating for the common good without compulsion. It is a vision of how people may endow their lives with meaning-living according to their deepest beliefs and taking responsibility for the consequences of their actions.

Daily show on Turkey...

This one was a funny one that was on October 18th...

More on Ron Paul...

Ron Paul's position on Church and State taken from his December 2003 article entitled, "Christmas in Secular America", makes some points I agree with:

The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders’ political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs. Certainly the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both replete with references to God, would be aghast at the federal government’s hostility to religion. The establishment clause of the First Amendment was simply intended to forbid the creation of an official state church like the Church of England, not to drive religion out of public life. The Founding Fathers envisioned a robustly Christian yet religiously tolerant America, with churches serving as vital institutions that would eclipse the state in importance. Throughout our nation’s history, churches have done what no government can ever do, namely teach morality and civility. Moral and civil individuals are largely governed by their own sense of right and wrong, and hence have little need for external government.

History of Ron Paul...

Since there is still quite a bit of discussion out there before the whole primary process begins about Ron Paul and what his presidential chances are I though it would be interesting to take a look back at some of the political history of Ron Paul...

In 1982, Ron Paul was the prime mover in the creation of the U.S. Gold Commission, and in many public speeches Paul has voiced concern over the dominance of the debt-based monetary system and called for the return to a commodity-backed currency through a gradual re-introduction of hard currency including both gold and silver. A commodity standard binds currency issue to the value of that commodity rather than fiat, making the value of the currency as stable as the commodity. Ron Paul supports the gold standard to prevent inflation. The Minority Report of the U.S. Gold Commission states that the federal and state governments are strictly limited in their monetary role by Article One, Section Eight, Clauses 2, 5, and 6, and Section Ten, Clause 1, "The Constitution forbids the states to make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debt, nor does it permit the federal government to make anything a legal tender." The Commission also recommended that the federal government "... restore a definition for the term 'dollar.' We suggest defining a 'dollar' as a weight of gold of a certain fineness, .999 fine."