Download or read book Filibustering written by Gregory Koger and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-06-15 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the modern Congress, one of the highest hurdles for major bills or nominations is gaining the sixty votes necessary to shut off a filibuster in the Senate. But this wasn’t always the case. Both citizens and scholars tend to think of the legislative process as a game played by the rules in which votes are the critical commodity—the side that has the most votes wins. In this comprehensive volume,Gregory Koger shows, on the contrary, that filibustering is a game with slippery rules in which legislators who think fast and try hard can triumph over superior numbers. Filibustering explains how and why obstruction has been institutionalized in the U.S. Senate over the last fifty years, and how this transformation affects politics and policymaking. Koger also traces the lively history of filibustering in the U.S. House during the nineteenth century and measures the effects of filibustering—bills killed, compromises struck, and new issues raised by obstruction. Unparalleled in the depth of its theory and its combination of historical and political analysis, Filibustering will be the definitive study of its subject for years to come.
Download or read book Manifest Destiny s Underworld written by Robert E. May and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2003-04-03 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fascinating study sheds new light on antebellum America's notorious "filibusters--the freebooters and adventurers who organized or participated in armed invasions of nations with whom the United States was formally at peace. Offering the first full-scale analysis of the filibustering movement, Robert May relates the often-tragic stories of illegal expeditions into Cuba, Mexico, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and other Latin American countries and details surprising numbers of aborted plots, as well. May investigates why thousands of men joined filibustering expeditions, how they were financed, and why the U.S. government had little success in curtailing them. Surveying antebellum popular media, he shows how the filibustering phenomenon infiltrated the American psyche in newspapers, theater, music, advertising, and literature. Condemned abroad as pirates, frequently in language strikingly similar to modern American denunciations of foreign terrorists, the filibusters were often celebrated at home as heroes who epitomized the spirit of Manifest Destiny. May concludes by exploring the national consequences of filibustering, arguing that the practice inflicted lasting damage on U.S. relations with foreign countries and contributed to the North-South division over slavery that culminated in the Civil War.
Download or read book Kill Switch The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy written by Adam Jentleson and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2021-01-12 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a new epilogue on filibuster battles under the Biden administration THE CASE FOR ENDING THE FILIBUSTER "A truly excellent book… blistering and persuasive.” —Ezra Klein, New York Times An insider’s account of how politicians representing a radical white minority of Americans have used “the world’s greatest deliberative body” to hijack our democracy. Our democracy is under assault from homegrown authoritarians, with most observers blaming Donald Trump and the Republican Party that submitted to him. Yet as Adam Jentleson shows, the problem not only goes back to the nineteenth century, but is less about the presidency than it is about our nation’s most venerated institution: the United States Senate. A revelatory history of minority rule in America as expressed through the Senate filibuster, Kill Switch shows that white conservatives have long relied on the filibuster—which is not featured in the Constitution, and which, as Jentleson demonstrates, the Framers would have opposed—to shut down attempts to create a multiracial democracy. Featuring a new epilogue on filibuster battles under the Biden administration, Kill Switch will remain an essential warning about the costs of empowering this nation’s right-wing minority. • “Jentleson understands the inner workings of the institution, down to the most granular details, showing precisely how arcane procedural rules can be leveraged to dramatic effect.” —Jennifer Szalai, New York Times • “Careful and thorough and exacting.” —Michael Tomasky, New York Review of Books • “[An] excellent, surprising new book.” —Benjamin Wallace-Wells, The New Yorker
Download or read book Filibuster written by Gregory J. Wawro and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-24 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Parliamentary obstruction, popularly known as the "filibuster," has been a defining feature of the U.S. Senate throughout its history. In this book, Gregory J. Wawro and Eric Schickler explain how the Senate managed to satisfy its lawmaking role during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, when it lacked seemingly essential formal rules for governing debate. What prevented the Senate from self-destructing during this time? The authors argue that in a system where filibusters played out as wars of attrition, the threat of rule changes prevented the institution from devolving into parliamentary chaos. They show that institutional patterns of behavior induced by inherited rules did not render Senate rules immune from fundamental changes. The authors' theoretical arguments are supported through a combination of extensive quantitative and case-study analysis, which spans a broad swath of history. They consider how changes in the larger institutional and political context--such as the expansion of the country and the move to direct election of senators--led to changes in the Senate regarding debate rules. They further investigate the impact these changes had on the functioning of the Senate. The book concludes with a discussion relating battles over obstruction in the Senate's past to recent conflicts over judicial nominations.
Download or read book The Speech written by Bernie Sanders and published by Bold Type Books. This book was released on 2015-12-22 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On Friday, December 10, 2010, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders walked on to the floor of the United States Senate and began speaking. It turned out to be a very long speech, lasting over eight and a half hours. And it hit a nerve. Millions followed the speech online until the traffic crashed the Senate server. A huge, positive grassroots response tied up the phones in the senator's offices in Vermont and Washington. President Obama reportedly held an impromptu press conference with former President Clinton to deflect media attention away from Sanders' speech. Editorials and news coverage appeared throughout the world. In his speech, Sanders blasted the agreement that President Obama struck with Republicans, which extended the Bush tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, lowered estate tax rates for the very, very rich, and set a terrible precedent by establishing a "payroll tax holiday" diverting revenue away from the Social Security Trust Fund, threatening the fund's very future. But the speech was more than a critique of a particular piece of legislation. It was a dissection of the collapse of the American middle class and a well-researched attack on corporate greed and on public policy which, over the last several decades, has led to a huge growth in millionaires even as the United States has the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world. It was a plea for a fundamental change in national priorities, for government policy that reflects the needs of working families, and not just the wealthy and their lobbyists. Finally, Sanders' speech-published here in its entirety with a new introduction by the senator-is a call for action. It is a passionate statement informing us that the only people who will save the middle class of this country is the middle class itself, but only if it is informed, organized, and prepared to take on the enormously powerful special interests dominating Washington.
Download or read book Schemers Dreamers written by Joseph Allen Stout and published by TCU Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether any plan to enter Mexico was carried out or whether the leaders were U.S. citizens was unimportant to the Mexican government. To Mexico the significance was that the groups recruited, organized, and plotted their entradas from the United States in full view of the U.S. government even as newspapers in both countries published dozens of articles about the endeavors.".
Download or read book We Never Retreat written by Edward A. Bradley and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2015-02-09 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The term “filibuster” often brings to mind a senator giving a long-winded speech in opposition to a bill, but the term had a different connotation in the nineteenth century—invasion of foreign lands by private military forces. Spanish Texas was a target of such invasions. Generally given short shrift in the studies of American-based filibustering, these expeditions were led by colorful men such as Augustus William Magee, Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara, John Robinson, and James Long. Previous accounts of their activities are brief, lack the appropriate context to fully understand filibustering, and leave gaps in the historiography. Ed Bradley now offers a thorough recounting of filibustering into Spanish Texas framed through the lens of personal and political motives: why American men participated in them and to what extent the US government was either involved in or tolerated them. “We Never Retreat” makes a major contribution by placing these expeditions within the contexts of the Mexican War of Independence and international relations between the United States and Spain.
Download or read book Writing to Cuba written by Rodrigo Lazo and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2006-03-08 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the mid-nineteenth century, some of Cuba's most influential writers settled in U.S. cities and published a variety of newspapers, pamphlets, and books. Collaborating with military movements known as filibusters, this generation of exiled writers created a body of literature demanding Cuban independence from Spain and alliance with or annexation to the United States. Drawing from rare materials archived in the United States and Havana, Rodrigo Lazo offers new readings of works by writers such as Cirilo Villaverde, Juan Clemente Zenea, Pedro Santacilia, and Miguel T. Tolon. Lazo argues that to understand these writers and their publications, we must move beyond nation-based models of literary study and consider their connections to both Cuba and the United States. Anchored by the publication of Spanish- and English-language newspapers in the United States, the transnational culture of writers Lazo calls los filibusteros went hand in hand with a long-standing economic flow between the countries and was spurred on by the writers' belief in the American promise of freedom and the hemispheric ambitions of the expansionist U.S. government. Analyzing how U.S. politicians, journalists, and novelists debated the future of Cuba, Lazo argues that the war of words carried out in Cuban-U.S. print culture played a significant role in developing nineteenth-century conceptions of territory, colonialism, and citizenship.
Download or read book Filibusters and Expansionists written by Frank L. Owsley and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2004-03-22 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the roles that Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe played in the saga of Gulf Coast territorial expansion and Manifest Destiny. Focusing on expansion into the south and southwest, the authors describe the relentless official and unofficial federally sponsored efforts and filibustering expeditions used to encourage Americans to fulfill their goal of landownership. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Filibuster to Delay a Kiss written by Courtney Queeney and published by Random House. This book was released on 2008-11-19 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Family was a whitewashed, / milk-toothed word / that couldn’t account for the mother / who wept and burnt / the roast if the floor was dirty– / or if it was Tuesday, or there were clouds. Written in an eloquent and searingly honest voice, these poems address the pain and pleasure of growing up. Courtney Queeney tells intense emotional truths in poetry that is at once personal and universal. She exposes the rawness of a complicated relationship with her mother–She mothered the disorder in me, / this difficulty getting out of bed / and dressing like a real human adult, / trying not to be her daughter–and her attitude toward love expresses both profound longing and erotic dissonance: I translate love from the hush of a hung-up phone / before a body comes to engage me for an hour. And Queeney writes with humor and self-doubt of the conflict between desire and the quest to remain true to oneself–I will fly around the world on an airplane until I arrive at calm. / I will spend my days suspended in air, manufacturing a closure. Filibuster to Delay a Kiss sounds a new and distinctive note in the symphony of young American poets.
Download or read book The Legacy of the Filibuster War written by Marco Cabrera Geserick and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the development of the Filibuster War as the main symbol of Costa Rican national identity. By analyzing the ways in which national narratives have been created around the war, the author argues that national identity is a dynamic process defined according to local, national, and international contexts.
Download or read book Exceptions to the Rule written by Molly E. Reynolds and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2017-07-18 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Special rules enable the Senate to act despite the filibuster. Sometimes. Most people believe that, in today's partisan environment, the filibuster prevents the Senate from acting on all but the least controversial matters. But this is not exactly correct. In fact, the Senate since the 1970s has created a series of special rules—described by Molly Reynolds as “majoritarian exceptions”—that limit debate on a wide range of measures on the Senate floor. The details of these exemptions might sound arcane and technical, but in practice they have enabled the Senate to act even when it otherwise seemed paralyzed. Important examples include procedures used to pass the annual congressional budget resolution, enact budget reconciliation bills, review proposals to close military bases, attempt to prevent arms sales, ratify trade agreements, and reconsider regulations promulgated by the executive branch. Reynolds argues that these procedures represent a key instrument of majority party power in the Senate. They allow the majority—even if it does not have the sixty votes needed to block a filibuster—to produce policies that will improve its future electoral prospects, and thus increase the chances it remains the majority party. As a case study, Exceptions to the Rule examines the Senate's role in the budget reconciliation process, in which particular congressional committees are charged with developing procedurally protected proposals to alter certain federal programs in their jurisdictions. Created as a way of helping Congress work through tricky budget issues, the reconciliation process has become a powerful tool for the majority party to bypass the minority and adopt policy changes in hopes that it will benefit in the next election cycle.
Download or read book The Senate written by Daniel Wirls and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2021-09-23 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this lively analysis, Daniel Wirls examines the Senate in relation to our other institutions of government and the constitutional system as a whole, exposing the role of the "world’s greatest deliberative body" in undermining effective government and maintaining white supremacy in America. As Wirls argues, from the founding era onward, the Senate constructed for itself an exceptional role in the American system of government that has no firm basis in the Constitution. This self-proclaimed exceptional status is part and parcel of the Senate’s problematic role in the governmental process over the past two centuries, a role shaped primarily by the combination of equal representation among states and the filibuster, which set up the Senate’s clash with modern democracy and effective government and has contributed to the contemporary underrepresentation of minority members. As he explains, the Senate’s architecture, self-conception, and resulting behavior distort rather than complement democratic governance and explain the current gridlock in Washington, D.C. If constitutional changes to our institutions are necessary for better governance, then how should the Senate be altered to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem? This book provides one answer.
Download or read book Defending the Filibuster Revised and Updated Edition written by Richard A. Arenberg and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-21 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent legislative battles over healthcare reform, the federal budget, and other prominent issues have given rise to widespread demands for the abolition or reform of the filibuster in the US Senate. Critics argue that members’ traditional rights of unlimited debate and amendment have led to paralyzing requirements for supermajorities and destructive parliamentary tactics such as "secret holds." In Defending the Filibuster, a veteran Senate aide and a former Senate Parliamentarian maintain that the filibuster is fundamental to the character of the Senate. They contend that the filibuster protects the rights of the minority in American politics, assures stability and deliberation in government, and helps to preserve constitutional principles of checks and balances and separation of powers. Richard A. Arenberg and Robert B. Dove provide an instructive historical overview of the development of Senate rules, define and describe related procedures and tactics, examine cases related to specific pieces of legislation, and consider current proposals to end the filibuster or enact other reforms. Arguing passionately in favor of retaining the filibuster, they offer a stimulating assessment of the issues surrounding current debates on this contentious issue.
Download or read book Agents of Manifest Destiny written by Charles H. Brown and published by . This book was released on 2012-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Agents of Manifest Destiny: The Lives and Times of the Filibusters
Download or read book Constitutionalism and the Rule of Law written by Maurice Adams and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-02 with total page 559 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rule of law and constitutionalist ideals are understood by many, if not most, as necessary to create a just political order. Defying the traditional division between normative and positive theoretical approaches, this book explores how political reality on the one hand, and constitutional ideals on the other, mutually inform and influence each other. Seventeen chapters from leading international scholars cover a diverse range of topics and case studies to test the hypothesis that the best normative theories, including those regarding the role of constitutions, constitutionalism and the rule of law, conceive of the ideal and the real as mutually regulating.
Download or read book Filibusters and Cloture in the Senate written by Richard S. Beth and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2010-08 with total page 25 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contents: (1) Right to Debate: Right to Recognition; Right to Speak at Length and the Two-Speech Rule; Motion to Table; (2) Conduct of Filibusters (FB): Germaneness of Debate; Yielding the Floor and Yielding for Questions; Quorums and Quorum Calls; Roll Call Voting; Scheduling FB; (3) Invoking Cloture (CL): When CL May be Invoked: Timing of CL Motions; (4) Effects of Invoking CL: Time for Consid¿n. and Debate; Offering Amend. and Motions: Germane Amend. Only; Amend. in Writing; Multiple Amend.; Dilatory Amend. and Motions; Reading and Division of Amend.; Authority of the Presiding Officer; Bus. on the Senate Floor; (5) Impact of FB: Impact on the Time for Consid¿n.; Prospect of a FB: Holds; Linkage and Leverage; Consensus. Ill.
