The longest filibuster in United States history currently stands at 24 hours, and 18 minutes. This is over an entire
The longest filibuster in United States history currently stands at 24 hours, and 18 minutes. This is over an entire
Pivotal Politics in the 111th Senate There are two sides to every issue. Progress relies on compromise and strength—and the effects of neglecting such ideologies can be seen in the controversy of climate change in the 111th Congress. The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES) was an energy bill created in hopes of reversing climate change; despite the efforts of several senators drafting climate change bills, the Senate failed to pass legislation in the 111th Congress. The events occurring in this process can be explained further by pivotal politics.…
Barry Goldwater’s conservative beliefs would revolutionize the Republican party on a new path to gain supporters. At the time that he wrote his book, only eight out of the past twenty-eight years would a Republican clenched the presidential office, to which owed its thanks to Dwight Eisenhower being a war hero. Goldwater gathered his thoughts and beliefs into his ten-chapter book that brought economic conservatism to the spotlight and would be followed by top Republicans all the way up to the year 2017. The Three strongest beliefs that would string Republicans together over time, would be as follows: 1)Cutting government spending Goldwater takes a hard hit to the idea of the government supporting the less fortunate.…
Ron Paul is America’s leading advocate for freedom. Paul believes in Civil Liberties and is actively fighting for our rights from inside the government as a congressman. He was a U.S representative in Texas. He is said to be retiring from politics but a petition has been started to try to keep Paul in the House of Representatives to keep fighting for our freedoms and be a hero to the little people of America.…
American Politics 1 Presentation In Robert H. Bork’s Testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee (1987), he was delivering testimony before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee on his judicial philosophy. He points out what he believes is his understanding of the role of the judiciary in a constitutional democracy. Judge Bork believes that a judiciary’s authority derives from applying the law and not personal values, the intentions of the lawmakers to govern whether the lawmakers are the Congress enacting a statute or those who ratified our constitution, and the precedent of those in the judiciary who enacted a law in the past. Bork points out that he wrote in an opinion for our courts, the judge’s responsibility is “to discern how the framers’ values, defined in the context of the world they knew, apply in the world we know.…
What we call judicial review today came about in the case Marbury v. Madison (1803), when Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall assumed that power from the legislator. Marbury v Madison made it clear that the Supreme Court had claimed Judicial Supremacy in deciding unconstitutionality. In the book, Taking Away the Constitution From the Courts, author Mark Tushnet argues, “Doing away with judicial review would have one clear effect: It would return all constitutional decision-making to the people acting politically. It would make populist constitutional law the only constitutional law there is” (154).…
The average length time congressmen are in office is between nine and ten years. While this may be fine, at least two members of the House and Senate have spent more than fifty years in office. This lack of political turnover is some Presidents, including Donald Trump, campaigned to create turn limits. While sounding appealing, no President would ever turn on their party by creating term limits. Along with the line item veto, the Supreme Court ruled that congressional terms limits were unconstitutional.…
1. Summary of End the Fed “End the Fed” by Ron Paul argues how the federal reserve (Fed) is detrimental to the economy and the nation. Although, the Fed claims that its role is to keep inflation in control, implement a solvent banking system, regulate financial system and also keeps the business cycle in steady state, Ron Paul disagrees on the above mentioned points and argues that the Fed has ironically created more problems than resolving them. By drawing examples from American history, experiences from his political career as well as his knowledge, Ron Paul put up a strong argument on how the Fed is corrupted, immoral and unconstitutional through a philosophical, economic and libertarian point of view. At the end, Ron Paul emphasises on…
A filibuster is an action, such as a prolonged speech, that obstructs progress in a legislative assembly while not technically contravening the required procedures. The filibuster is regarded as an obstacle because it can delay a bill and act from getting passed. They often refer a filibuster to “talking a bill to death” because that’s all they do. They can talk for hours on end without stopping. For example, the longest filibuster to have ever happened was by US senator Strom Thurmond.…
USA PATRIOT Act The USA PATRIOT Act was signed into law by Congress and the president at the time, George W. Bush, on October 26, 2011. It was voted in the Senate 98-1 and the House of Representatives agreed 357-66 to pass the law. The ten letter backronym stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Protecting Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism. The Congress was able to create this Act within a short period of time because they “took existing legal principles and retrofitted them to preserve the lives and liberty of the American people from the challenges posed by a global terrorist network” ("Preserving Life and Liberty").…
An act where the government can provide higher security for our country. An act that further protects Americans. The Patriot act strengthens and improves America by providing the appropriate tools to intercept terrorism in America. Providing America with the maximum security and doing everything to protect us from events such as 9/11 from happening again, is the governments goal with placing the Patriot Act.…
It takes 60 votes to invoke cloture, so 41 senators can indefinitely block…
Modern Issues and Applications Both majority and minority parties have utilized the filibuster and the vague rules surrounding it to pursue individual party agendas. For example, during the 113th Congress (2013-2015) changes to the “tracking” technique occurred when minority Republicans agreed to not filibuster legislation so long as the Democratic majority allowed them to suggest amendments. This restricted the Democrat Majority Leader’s ability to block the Republican minority from adding amendments, entitling the minority to two of the four pending amendments. The 113th Congress also considered changes to filibuster rules, such as lowering the number of votes necessary for cloture, however there wasn’t enough support at the time to obtain…
The Department of Homeland Security and the US Patriot Act where created and passed as a direct result of the terrorist attacks orchestrated on September 11, 2001. As a package, both work to preserve life and liberty to citizens of the United States, whether in the homeland or abroad. Therefore, the Department of Homeland Security, while utilizing the US Patriot Act, has partnered with local law enforcement in order to be on the front lines of detecting and preventing homeland terrorism. The Department of Homeland Security, through the use of the US Patriot Act, has affected the local criminal justice process through the militarization of law enforcement and the deployment of cutting edge surveillance techniques and equipment.…
A filibuster is defined as a prologues speech given by senators to delay the chamber’s business. Therefore, it something that impairs policy making from occurring. This tactic is used normally when a senator wants to have a bill or nomination be ignored so it won’t be voted on. They do this by taking all of the available time for the bill by talking or making a prolonged speech. Which means that the filibuster is believed to impair the political process.…
Although states a rather convincing point for the pro filibuster side, there are several other arguments that prove that the filibuster is not being used in that way. In today’s society it is viewed more as a way to halt discussion and improvement of a bill and used more as a way to completely ignore a bill or an act all…