by Will Johnston at 2:27 AM on November 22nd, 2009 in Politics - 4 Comments
UPDATE: Looks like I was wrong on this one. While cloture is a motion to end debate, on Saturday the Senate invoked cloture on the motion to proceed to the bill, not on the bill itself, making the statement that the senate agreed to begin debating the bill a true one. I should have looked more closely!
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Time for a quick civics lesson! Countless news agencies are misreporting that yesterday’s Senate vote on the health care bill is a vote to begin debating the bill.
From the Washington Post:
After days of indecision, the last two Democratic holdouts — Sens. Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) and Mary Landrieu (La.) — joined their caucus in supporting a motion to begin debate.
In olden days, you couldn’t actually ever stop debate on a bill if any Senator wanted to keep talking about it. As you can imagine, this meant that if a couple of Senators were really opposed to something, they could just take turns talking about it until the rest of the Senators caved and moved on to the other things they needed to vote on. In an effort to help move things along, the Senate changed its rules so that if two-thirds of the Senators wanted to end debate, they could do so by invoking cloture. Yes, it sounds a lot like closure, and the two words have very similar meanings. They’re about bringing something to an end.
The bar for invoking cloture was still so high that it was nearly impossible to do. Getting two-thirds of the Senate to agree on everything is like getting two three-year-olds to eat all of their vegetables. In fact, cloture was only invoked five times during the next 46 years. Consequently, the Senate changed its rules to require only three-fifths of the Senators to vote for a cloture motion in order for it to pass.
I hope this little history and civics lesson has helped you understand what the Senate voted on last night. The fact is that the news agencies weren’t reporting what really happened. Cloture takes a bit more to explain well than can be put in a news article about another topic, so they took a shortcut. The party in control of Congress (currently the Democratic Party) sets the agenda and can debate whatever they want. They didn’t have to win a Senate vote to debate health care reform, they had to win a Senate vote to put an end to debating health care reform so they can actually vote on passing the bill.
Last night Jon Stewart interviewed Elizabeth Warren, the chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Trouble Assets Relief Program (TARP). It was probably the best Daily Show interview I have ever seen. She was absolutely hilarious and scathing in her criticisms. If you’re in front of a TV, you can watch it right now on Comedy Central. Otherwise check it out below:
Alright, my last iPod Shuffle give away failed to actually lead to a give away. So here it goes again. If @ObamaNews gets 100,000 followers by midnight on Easter, I’ll give away a 2nd Gen Shuffle. All of the other fine print from the last contest still applies. Good luck, and don’t forget to tell your friends!
So, here’s your chance to win an iPod Shuffle (2nd Gen). All you need to do is follow ObamaNews on Twitter. If the account reaches 70,000 followers by 12:00 PM EST on Thursday, March 19, one lucky follower will be selected (using TwitRand) to receive an iPod shuffle.
You do have to be a real person to win (i.e. not Starbucks or some other corporation), and you’ve got to reside in the U.S. Sorry, I don’t want to run afoul of any international laws! You’ll also be responsible for any taxes or fees or whatever.
If you win and you’re willing to let me use a picture of you with the Shuffle, you can get some free publicity on my blog and my personal Twitter account, which has around 2,000 followers.
In preparation for our trip, we had Dr. Cynthia Calla, founder of LifeRise AIDS Resources, come speak to our group at our January 4 meeting. (Like I mentioned before, I’m behind on updates!)
Here are a few facts on AIDS:
Nearly 8500 people die from AIDS every day.1
That is like having more than 13 Indian Ocean Tsunami’s per year.1
2.2 million of the 3.1 million deaths that occur each year are in Africa.1
Washington DC has one of the highest incidences of AIDS in the United States.
Sometimes it’s easier to go help “those people over there” than the ones in our backyard. I have a heart for people suffering in third world countries and want to (and do) take steps to care for them, but I don’t want to forget about the people who are right here either.
Rachel and I went out to see Barack Obama’s Inauguration today. We were far enough back that we couldn’t actually see what was going on at the Capitol, but here are some shots of what we did see, both in our trek to and from the National Mall and our experience there.
Regardless of your political persuasion, there is no doubt that the inauguration of America’s first African-American President is an historic moment, and it was very cool to be there for it.
How did you experience the Presidential Inauguration?
At the beginning of the year I traveled to South Carolina, New York, and Maryland (ok, that one’s a short trip) to do some campaigning. I was hoping to find a job in a Presidential administration (assuming my candidate won, of course).
A side note (but a cool one) was that while campaigning I made my first trip to New York City.
In March I was sitting in a Good Friday service at NCC, and I felt God renewing the call to ministry that He had placed on my life nearly seven years earlier. I stopped campaigning and started trying to figure out what was next.
In July, after much thought and heartache, I applied for and was accepted into the new one-year-internship program (i.e. Protege Program) at NCC.
The fall was filled with retreats and conferences, but the one that had the biggest impact on me was the Catalyst conference in Atlanta. Craig Groeschel spoke on “It,” and he and the Holy Spirit rocked my world.
