Download or read book The American Senate written by Neil MacNeil and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-31 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Society for History in the Federal Government's George Pendleton Prize for 2013 The United States Senate has fallen on hard times. Once known as the greatest deliberative body in the world, it now has a reputation as a partisan, dysfunctional chamber. What happened to the house that forged American history's great compromises? In this groundbreaking work, a distinguished journalist and an eminent historian provide an insider's history of the United States Senate. Richard A. Baker, historian emeritus of the Senate, and Neil MacNeil, former chief congressional correspondent for Time magazine, integrate nearly a century of combined experience on Capitol Hill with deep research and state-of-the-art scholarship. They explore the Senate's historical evolution with one eye on persistent structural pressures and the other on recent transformations. Here, for example, are the Senate's struggles with the presidency--from George Washington's first, disastrous visit to the chamber on August 22, 1789, through now-forgotten conflicts with Presidents Garfield and Cleveland, to current war powers disputes. The authors also explore the Senate's potent investigative power, and show how it began with an inquiry into John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859. It took flight with committees on the conduct of the Civil War, Reconstruction, and World War II; and it gained a high profile with Joseph McCarthy's rampage against communism, Estes Kefauver's organized-crime hearings (the first to be broadcast), and its Watergate investigation. Within the book are surprises as well. For example, the office of majority leader first acquired real power in 1952--not with Lyndon Johnson, but with Republican Robert Taft. Johnson accelerated the trend, tampering with the sacred principle of seniority in order to control issues such as committee assignments. Rampant filibustering, the authors find, was the ironic result of the passage of 1960s civil rights legislation. No longer stigmatized as a white-supremacist tool, its use became routine, especially as the Senate became more partisan in the 1970s. Thoughtful and incisive, The American Senate: An Insider's History transforms our understanding of Congress's upper house.
Download or read book Citadel the Story of the U S Senate written by William Smith White and published by . This book was released on 1957 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The American Senate written by Lindsay Rogers and published by . This book was released on 1926 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book United States Senate Catalogue of Fine Art written by William Kloss and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on 2002 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Invention of the United States Senate written by Daniel Wirls and published by Johns Hopkins University Press. This book was released on 2004-03-04 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The invention of the United States Senate was the most complicated and confounding achievement of the Constitutional Convention. Although much has been written on various aspects of Senate history, this is the first book to examine and link the three central components of the Senate's creation: the theoretical models and institutional precedents leading up to the Constitutional Convention; the work of the Constitutional Convention on both the composition and powers of the Senate; and the initial institutionalization of the Senate from ratification through the early years of Congress. The authors show how theoretical principles of a properly constructed Senate interacted with political interests and power politics in the multidimensional struggle to construct the Senate, before, during, and after the convention.
Download or read book Congressional Record written by United States. Congress and published by . This book was released on 1919 with total page 1084 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
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 The Senate of the Roman Republic written by Robert C. Byrd and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on 1995 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a series of fourteen addresses delivered in 1993 before the Senate by Senator Robert C. Byrd. Discusses the constitutional history of separated and shared powers as shaped in the republic and empire of ancient Rome. These lectures are also in opposition to the proposed line-item veto concept. The introduction states that Senator Byrd delivered these speeches entirely from memory and without notes.
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 International Law And The Status Of Women written by Natalie Kaufman Hevener and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-04 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since 1945 more than 20 international legal instruments dealing specifically with women have been modified or consummated, reflecting a growing international consensus on issues concerning women's role in society. This book is the first complete collection and examination of this group of documents. Dr. Hevener analyzes each of the agreements and assesses its likely impact on the legal status of women. Categorizing the documents according to their goals, she demonstrates the broad range of economic, social, and political concerns they cover and evaluates contemporary patterns and future needs they reveal. The book includes a table of ratifications organized by country and region.
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 Desk 88 written by Sherrod Brown and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since his election to the U.S. Senate in 2006, Ohio’s Sherrod Brown has sat on the Senate floor at a mahogany desk with a proud history. In Desk 88, he tells the story of eight of the Senators who were there before him. "Perhaps the most imaginative book to emerge from the Senate since Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts produced Profiles in Courage." —David M. Shribman, The Boston Globe Despite their flaws and frequent setbacks, each made a decisive contribution to the creation of a more just America. They range from Hugo Black, who helped to lift millions of American workers out of poverty, to Robert F. Kennedy, whose eyes were opened by an undernourished Mississippi child and who then spent the rest of his life afflicting the comfortable. Brown revives forgotten figures such as Idaho’s Glen Taylor, a singing cowboy who taught himself economics and stood up to segregationists, and offers new insights into George McGovern, who fought to feed the poor around the world even amid personal and political calamities. He also writes about Herbert Lehman of New York, Al Gore Sr. of Tennessee, Theodore Francis Green of Rhode Island, and William Proxmire of Wisconsin. Together, these eight portraits in political courage tell a story about the triumphs and failures of the Progressive idea over the past century: in the 1930s and 1960s, and more intermittently since, politicians and the public have successfully fought against entrenched special interests and advanced the cause of economic or racial fairness. Today, these advances are in peril as employers shed their responsibilities to employees and communities, and a U.S. president gives cover to bigotry. But the Progressive idea is not dead. Recalling his own career, Brown dramatizes the hard work and high ideals required to renew the social contract and create a new era in which Americans of all backgrounds can know the “Dignity of Work.”
Download or read book The Last Great Senate written by Ira Shapiro and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-12-28 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Last Great Senate tells the story of the final four years of the progressive Senate of the 1960s and 1970s which compiled a record of accomplishment unmatched in our country’s history. It is a narrative history of the statesman who, working with an outsider president, Jimmy Carter, helped steer America through the crisis years of the late 1970s, transcending partisanship and overcoming procedural roadblocks that have all but crippled the Senate over the past quarter- century. The Last Great Senate recalls a critical juncture in American politics, offering a new view of the kind of leadership that will be required to restore the nation’s upper house to greatness. The book brings to life the renowned senators of the time---Ted Kennedy, Howard Baker, Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Ed Muskie, Jacob Javits, Robert Byrd and others---while capturing the Senate as an ensemble cast in a way that no previous book has. Mr. Shapiro recounts a series of legislative battles, including the historic fight over the Panama Canal treaty and the rescues of New York City and Chrysler, that are remarkable case studies of the legislative process in action. His preface to this second edition provides a compelling summary of the Senate’s struggles since 1980, including the first six months of the Trump presidency. The author’s love of the Senate and his deep belief in its special role in our political system make the book an antidote to cynicism, leaving readers with some hope that the Senate can reverse its long decline to become again what Walter F. Mondale called “the nation’s mediator.”
Download or read book U S Senators and Their World written by Donald R. Matthews and published by Greenwood. This book was released on 1980 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ralph W Yarborough the People s Senator written by Patrick L. Cox and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-06-28 with total page 509 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling biography of a Texas senator who was “a defiant, dedicated liberal in the face of conservative Southern politics” (Publishers Weekly). Revered by many Texans and other Americans as “the People’s Senator,” Ralph Webster Yarborough fought for “the little people” in a political career that places him in the ranks of the most influential leaders in Texas history. The only U.S. senator representing a former Confederate state to vote for every significant piece of modern civil rights legislation, Yarborough became a cornerstone of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs in the areas of education, environmental preservation, and health care. In doing so, he played a major role in the social and economic modernization of Texas and the American South. He often defied conventional political wisdom with his stands against powerful interests and with his vocal opposition to the Vietnam War. Yet to this day, his admirers speak of Yarborough as an inspiration for public service and a model of political independence and integrity. This biography offers the first in-depth look at the life and career of Ralph Yarborough. Patrick L. Cox draws on Yarborough’s personal and professional papers, as well as on extensive interviews with the senator and his associates, to follow Yarborough from his formative years in East Texas through his legal and judicial career in the 1930s, decorated military service in World War II, unsuccessful campaigns for Texas governor in the 1950s, distinguished tenure in the United States Senate from 1957 to 1970, and return to legal practice through the 1980s. Although Yarborough’s liberal politics set him at odds with most of the Texas power brokers of his time, including Lyndon Johnson, his accomplishments have become part of the national fabric. Medicare recipients, beneficiaries of the Cold War G.I. Bill, and even beachcombers on Padre Island National Seashore all share in the lasting legacy of Senator Ralph Yarborough.
Download or read book Electing the Senate written by Wendy J. Schiller and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-12-21 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How U.S. senators were chosen prior to the Seventeenth Amendment—and the consequences of Constitutional reform From 1789 to 1913, U.S. senators were not directly elected by the people—instead the Constitution mandated that they be chosen by state legislators. This radically changed in 1913, when the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, giving the public a direct vote. Electing the Senate investigates the electoral connections among constituents, state legislators, political parties, and U.S. senators during the age of indirect elections. Wendy Schiller and Charles Stewart find that even though parties controlled the partisan affiliation of the winning candidate for Senate, they had much less control over the universe of candidates who competed for votes in Senate elections and the parties did not always succeed in resolving internal conflict among their rank and file. Party politics, money, and personal ambition dominated the election process, in a system originally designed to insulate the Senate from public pressure. Electing the Senate uses an original data set of all the roll call votes cast by state legislators for U.S. senators from 1871 to 1913 and all state legislators who served during this time. Newspaper and biographical accounts uncover vivid stories of the political maneuvering, corruption, and partisanship—played out by elite political actors, from elected officials, to party machine bosses, to wealthy business owners—that dominated the indirect Senate elections process. Electing the Senate raises important questions about the effectiveness of Constitutional reforms, such as the Seventeenth Amendment, that promised to produce a more responsive and accountable government.
Download or read book The Crime Against Kansas written by Charles Sumner and published by . This book was released on 1856 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Speech delivered in the Senate condemning the Southern expansion of slavery and the force used in compelling Kansas to be a slave state. In the course of the speech, Sumner ridicules South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler.
