In the Senate a side which doesn’t have enogh votes to stop a bill’s passage can continue debate indefinately. That’s called a filibuster. In olden days that was all. you could filibuster forever or stop and let the vote on the bill go forward. But, in recent days a filibuster can be ended if you have 60 votes — that’s called cloture because it’s like a blood clot stopping the flow of blood. If you have 60 votes you can clot debate and move on to actually voting on the bill — usually passing it.

There are a few more details about procedures, but that’s the big one.

Kathleen @ 147

On Democracy Now Amy Goodman announced that Kucinich and Gravel have been cut out of the last two debates in Iowa.

Did I see an article somewhere about Obama and Clinton being overheard discussing cutting some of the candidates out of the process?

iirc, it was clinton and edwards.

shit. i HATE it when Democrats show that they hate democracy. i’m going to call all the campaigns of the other candidates and ask that they demand inclusion of all in the debates.

Edwards told Clinton the press was minimizing some of the candidates and making them all look ridiculous. So, he said something about shrinking the debates to only the candidates the press would actually question. Nothing came of it back then. I wonder why it’s being done now.

I don’t think any of the candidates especially wanted the field shrunk.

Still, come primary time the wide field only helps Hillary and Obama as the more Progressive/Liberal vote would get split up among 4-5 candidates.

I’m hoping the more Left vote goes to Edwards and the conservative vote gets split evenly between Hillary and Barack. That ought shake up everything very nicely.

How’s the weather out in Iowa and up in New Hampshire these days?

I’d expect a lot of the campaigning will be moving in-doors and the speeches will get more personal and less stratified. More hand-shaking smiling and huggin’ and less oratory.

Still, the speech content should be a mix of abstract concept and vision on the one hand and some detail of plans and how they’d impact individual lives on the other hand.

People really want to know what impact a candidate as president would have on them.

I think Move-On should do a big ad for tomorrow letting people know just who voted against restoratino of Habeas Corpus, with a good fat juicy headline like: These people voted to strip your right of Habeas Corpus and list all the no votes in big type.

More than that — they voted to OVERTURN THE CONSTITUTION

alank @ 225

Ordered by vote and party affilation

Lincoln Blanche L - ( D - AR) AYE
…

Lieberman Joseph I. - ( I - CT) NAY
…


LOL. Who am I kidding? Anyone who votes for these fuckers doesn’t have things’ occurring to them.

Tom Allen just got another arrow for his quiver against Collins.

Aye, well put!