The probable end of the filibuster

Be prepared for a lot of ill-advised historically inaccurate hoohah about the Filibuster.

The filibuster, as we all know, is a "time honored" U.S. Senate tradition that meant, at one time, that debate could go on endlessly.  I.e., a bill could be talked to death.

Nobody really likes talking endlessly to nobody, so the real filibuster wasn't possible until the Senate changed its rules to allow endless talking in 1806, but even then it wasn't used until 1837, and rarely used at all up until. . . the 1970s.

Yes, the 1970s.

So it's a feature of our modern Congressional dysfunction.

The Senate, not much liking the actual act of having to stand there and talk, has a rule that it requires 60% of the Senate to vote to move most bills forward and close the debate.

But they can modify their rules by a simple majority vote.

They should. There's no Constitutional requirement that every measure receive 60% of the vote.  Up until the Obama Administration, most things that could get 50% could get 60%, but since that time things are so polarized that nothing happens.

That's setting us up for coup round two.

And it's antidemocratic. The filibuster should go.

And yes, that will mean that a government with a thin, thin, majority, can pass legislation.  And probably will.

And that will mean that a minority that's barely a minority will probably almost certainly pick up seats in the off year election.

So be it.

Our government isn't functioning . . . at all.  It needs to.

Wednesday July 13, 1921. A rump Irish Parliament meets, a treaty ends, layoffs at the War Department, sinking empty ships, request for nature funding.

The Southern Ireland Parliament, that body set up by the British Parliament for Irish self rule in the south, convened, but only twelve Senators and two members of the House of Commons attended.  This was likely no surprise as the British had entered into an armistice with the Dáil Éireann a few days prior, that being the self-declared legislative body of Ireland that had declared independence.

The Dáil Éireann had made use of British election laws when the Sinn Fein ran members for Parliament in 1919.  They did well and those members refused to take their seats in Parliament, declaring instead that they were the Irish Parliament.  It was, at the time, a unicameral body with only the equivalent of a House of Commons. A Senate would be added in 1922, thereby effectively duplicating the structure of the anticipated Southern Ireland Parliament.

Fifteen-year-old Jimmie Bradley testified in front of Congress in support of funding for nature study.

The Anglo Japanese Alliance, entered into in 1902, expired.

The alliance had been the legal basis of the Japanese Empire entering World War One on the Allied side, although it can be debated whether or not the Japanese would have entered anyway.  At any rate, they did as a British ally.  The alliance had served Japan well in its naval development but at the time the Pacific members of the British Commonwealth were increasingly worried about Japan as a potential enemy.  Indeed, a conference of Commonwealth members was ongoing at the time the treaty was allowed to expire.

On the same day, the U.S. War Department laid off 21,174 employees as a cost savings measure.

Harding reviewed a portrait of Gen. Pershing, the hero of the recent war, from the U.S. prospective.

The United States Army Air Corps sank the German destroyer SMS G102, a war prize ship, from the air.  The Air Corps, under Billy Mitchell, was busy proving its ability to sink ships, which would soon prove to be to the irritation of the Navy.

President Harding was given a chair made from the remnants of the USS Revenge, a pre War of 1812 warship.

Laddie Boy got to sit on it too.

The ship only served six years before running aground off of Rhode Island in 1811.  Its remains may have been located about a decade ago.