Could we really see an end to the dysfunction in the Senate? Perhaps not totally, but we could start down the road to reform tomorrow when the 112th Congress gets underway.
I just taped an interview with historian/author/professor emerita at UCLA Joyce Appleby that will run on this morning’s show. To be honest, I didn’t know of Joyce until I read her New Years Day piece on Huffington Post, The Urgency of a Senate Rule Change. I then found an op-ed she wrote for the LA Times: “The Senate filibuster: Time for a change“.
After hearing the history of the filibuster, Joyce Appleby explained why it’s imperative that the rules are changed as the 112th Congress convenes. She also pointed us to a whole slew of great pieces on the filibuster on the History News site.
Senator Tom Udall is leading the charge, and wrote about it in an op-ed for the Washington Post this morning. To be continued…
It’s Tuesday, and that means a visit from Gotta Laff of The Political Carnival. She brings these goodies to discuss today:
VIDEO: Thousands of dead birds fall from sky in Arkansas
Parolee could become Mitt Romney’s Willie Horton
Michael Steele doesn’t “see the crisis… I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy.”
VIDEO: Here’s what the GOP and tea party got for their vote to “take back America”.
Video- Asshat David Brooks tells New Yorkers to “suck it up”
Hung over or still drunk? Newt Gingrich tweets about “lakke michogan”.
VIDEO: GEICO’s R. Lee Ermey, appearing on behalf of Toys 4 Tots & USO, slams President Obama
The voice over artist that GEICO fired after Freedomworks released the private message asking about numbers of retarded Freedomworks employees was named DC Douglas. Freedomworks probably released it to pander to the intellectually disabled segment of the disability community to distract from Republican officials’ otherwise bad record on disability rights issues such as not adequately funding services and supports for independent living. A federal law passed in 2010 that changed the words “mental retardation” in all federal laws to “intellectual disability.” Some states like Virginia and Maryland had already made the same amendments to their state laws.