Nov 15, 2012
We're in luck! Greg Dworkin was able to join us this morning for a roundup light on the polls, but heavy on the punditry. We discuss Mitt's post-election gaffes, Angus King's coy games about caucusing with Democrats, and the coming fight on filibuster reform. And yes, we even took a detour into the 1%-er grifter narrative threatening to burst through the seams of the still-growing Petraus affair. Hour two of the show was about Part 2 of our "deep dive" into filibuster reform history. We picked up from where we left the previous show, describing the apparent conflict between the Constitution's grant to each house of Congress of the right to determine its own rules, and the Senate's own rules purporting both to require a 2/3 vote to end a filibuster of a rules change proposal, and to make that rule (and all the rest) perpetual, from one Congress to the next, unless changed in accordance with those same perpetual rules. We discussed the origin of the conflict, and how three Vice Presidents across both parties have settled the paradox in the past, all of which serve to illustrate why the beginning of a new Congress creates a special opportunity to enact rules changes by simple majority vote, and how it's happened in the past. The remaining piece of the puzzle, i.e., why no one seems to know it's been done in the past, despite knowing that the rules have in fact been changed, we'll settle next week. But you get a hint at it at the very end of today's show!