In the Age of Rage, no institution or process appears inviolate. When the majority of the Supreme Court shifted right, liberal academics and members demanded court packing — a practice long denounced as anathema to the rule of law. When the Supreme Court commission voiced concerns over court packing, it was denounced by liberal groups and two of the few conservative members resigned during the outcry. Academics have been called to “redo” the First Amendment after it became an impediment to social justice efforts. It is not surprising, therefore, that some of the same activists are now calling for the sacking of Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough. Her offense? She rendered a non-partisan judgment that Democrats could not push through the sweeping immigration reform package as part of the budget reconciliation process. Like the Supreme Court, the Parliamentarian was now an impediment to politics so she or her authority (or both) will have to go. Democratic members and staff are repeating the same menacing mantra that is now familiar in Washington of politics “by any means necessary.“
Democrats previously called for firing MacDonough when she ruled against them on a legislative issue. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) called for the the Senate to “replace the parliamentarian. What’s a Democratic majority if we can’t pass our priority bills? This is unacceptable.” Similar calls followed this decision. After all, what is the value of having a majority if you cannot do whatever you want in the way you want to do it?
That was the same question asked when the filibuster rule became an impediment rather than a benefit for members. For years, Democrats defended the rule as essential for the Senate in protecting minority rights. “God save us from that fate … [it] would change this fundamental understanding and unbroken practice of what the Senate is all about.” That included then Sen. Joe Biden and his colleagues, including then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and now-Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). To their credit, the Republicans refused to kill the rule despite calls to do so from President Donald Trump when they had the majority. However, once the majority shifted, the filibuster rule became one more casualty of convenience.
In the latest controversy, MacDonough was conducting what is referred to as the “Byrd bath” — a non-partisan function named after the late Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., during which the Senate parliamentarian ensures that every provision inside a reconciliation bill is tied to the budget. The immigration reform is clearly not a budget item, but the Democrats want to use reconciliation to bypass the filibuster rule and to use Vice President Kamala Harris to cast the deciding vote in a 50-50 tie.
The Byrd Bath process is meant to protect the Senate’s traditions of compromise and deliberation by preventing such efforts at end running the filibuster or the legislative process. The ruling of the Parliamentarian is not binding but comes with the force of a non-partisan professional applying these rules evenly and fairly. MacDonough did that.
There is little tolerance today, however, for jurists or clerks who reach their own conclusions on the merits of such questions. It is the wrong conclusion so MacDonough or her ruling would have to be removed.
Even if MacDonough keeps her job, various members are calling for a rare override of the ruling while others want the Democrats to simply pick a Senator for the chair who is willing to ignore the Parliamentarian and just follow pure muscle politics. Democratic members and staff are repeating the same menacing mantra that is now familiar in Washington “by any means necessary.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) who came out for court packing the same week, declared simply that MacDonough was “wrong” and, like her colleagues, emphasized that “we’re keeping all options on the table.” Likewise, Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.), and Sens. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.), Bob Menendez (D., N.J.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) all indicated a willingness to override or ignore the ruling.
For her part, Sen. Mazie Hirono (D., Hawaii) made it personal by not only saying “all options” are on the table but “the protection of millions of undocumented immigrants cannot be halted due to the advice of 1 person.”
Of course, it is not the decision of one person. The rule itself was adopted by the Senate as a whole as a matter of principle before that principle came with a cost. The rule was then implemented by not just the Parliamentarian but her entire apolitical staff.
Hirono’s response captured the ends-over-means mentality of modern American politics. Rather than address the purpose of the rule or the nonpartisan judgment on its meaning, Hirono just cited the value of making millions of undocumented immigrants citizens and then juxtaposed their fate against the decision of one person. MacDonough was not enforcing a rule, she was putting millions into harm’s way.
It was reminiscent of Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez justifying court packing by questioning “just, functionally, the idea that nine people, that a nine person court, can overturn laws that thousand– hundreds and thousands of legislators, advocates and policymakers drew consensus on.” She then added “How much does the current structure benefit us? And I don’t think it does.”
When the Byrd rule no longer benefited the Senate Democrats, it likewise became as expendable as the person who enforced it.
Thus, one plan would have Harris simply ignore the Parliamentarian and the rules. The implications of that move has a few Democrats uneasy over, what Sen. Ben Cardin (D., Md.) acknowledged would be “a pretty dramatic change” and a “direct attack with the parliamentarian.”
Sen. Joe Manchin (D, W.Va.) has also insisted that you have to “stick with the parliamentarian … on every issue. You can’t pick and choose.” (Manchin later also said that he would vote no on the Build Back Better bill). Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) also insisted that “there is no instance in which I would overrule a parliamentarian’s decision.”
That is not a lot of members but it would be enough to halt the effort to bulldoze the parliamentarian on immigration. However, the immediate response of Democratic members and groups captured how principle has little place in politics today. No institution or individual is a barrier when members have embraced politics “by any means necessary.”
Postmodernists cannot accept a “non-partisan professional applying these rules evenly and fairly” any more than they can accept ‘objectivity’ or ’empirical’ data. What matters to them is powerful arguments that can be used to establish and maintain the dominant narrative. That is what cancel culture is all about, and that is the culture that has permeated the universities, schools, and businesses of the country. Rules are made to be unmade, facts are there to be dismissed, and reality is whatever the narrative says it is.
These are the people you are dealing with — they are not amenable to rational argumentation, nor do they acknowledge tradition or respect fundamental laws. For them, the rule of law is what they say it is. But J. P. explains it better than I can . . . . beginning at 4 minutes and 24 seconds.
666 miles between the Baltic Sea and Moscow by way of submarine launched ballistic missiles. Visions of mushroom clouds rising over the Kremlin dancing in Putin’s head.
“. . . by any means necessary.“
That is the culture’s full-blown pragmatism.
You start with a desire — any desire (e.g., to enact legislation, to kill free speech). A desire or wish is the starting point, the given, and cannot be challenged. The only question is: What means most quickly satisfies that desire? (Thus the pragmatist’s motto: “The ends justifies the means.”)
If something is an impediment to satisfying your desire (e.g., the Supreme Court or the Byrd rule), then according to pragmatism, you are justified in sweeping it aside, ignoring it, wiping it out of existence.
If you want to stop this “by-any-means-necessary” suicide, then reject pragmatism.
The left’s blatant and outspoken attacks on our laws and legal institutions proves one thing: These institutions and laws are working and are keeping the fanatical collectivists from taking complete control of our government, and protecting, albeit in a much-reduced way, what’s left of our constitutional rights.
The irony is that the left is now holding a kangaroo court based on fake accusations of “insurrection” at the same time it’s actively working on its own insurrection. Doing away with the Supreme Court’s legitimacy is sabotage of the government and as much an insurrection as an attack on any other branch of government. The left has been outspoken about wanting to destroy the Constitution, laws, the police, and every other institution that stands in its way of complete and totalitarian control of society. Yet, they deflect by charging a ramshackle group of idiots with a crime that, in a nonpartisan context, would never pass muster. Not all insurrections are quick and spontaneous…some are slow and rot society from inside. Reagan was right… “If Fascism ever comes to America, it will come in the name of liberalism.”
Keep up your great work please
Does anyone else feel like we’re being ruled by a bunch of college sophomores?
Diogenes,
If you change that to high school sophomores, then I would say yes.
“high school sophomores”
And if you change that to spoiled children, I would say “yes.”
That would be an improvement. We are being ruled by the “any means necessary” group who have no respect for the constitution or the rule of law. Frightening.
Why ?? Why this Lemming Lurch to the far left ?? Is this a result of our schooling over the past 50 years or so? Have our youth been taught WHAT to think rather than HOW to think? What is this fascination for Marxian, Socialistic, authoritarian government ?
We assumed barring religion from the schools would keep controversy out only to discover that teachers’ unions and the egghead left had their own Grand Inquisitors. Now we have to go beyond Jefferson and make sure our schools are rid of toxic, secular dogmas, too. In Jefferson’s day, state religion was the big concern, but now we understand it’s more complicated than that.
The idea to prohibit ideology being promoted, or to be prohibited in private practice, by the state is embodied in the 1st amendment’s freedom of religion clause.
From there we get the bar from teaching religion in public schools.
But a religion doesn’t have to be theistic, and any set of moralistic axiomatic beliefs can be equivalent to a religion.
Critical race theory, LGBTQ existential egalitarianism, and all of other cohesive variations and denominations are effectively the modern standins for religion, and they are being officially promoted to be taught in public schools.
The same prohibitions to teaching legacy religion in public schools have to be applied to these newer religions masquerading as legitimate secular topics, for the same reasons.
That’s right, religion is essentially a behavioral protocol. A philosophy of practices that are advised by God, gods, mortal gods, or self through reconciliation or force, voluntary or involuntary. A religion is practiced in a universal frame of reference (i.e. morality), in a relativistic frame (i.e. ethics), or political congruence (i.e. law). The freedom from religion doctrine is a straw man that historically underlies the worst violations of humanity in pursuit of capital, control, and narcissistic relief.
RwCrampton,
But how would that explain Schumer, or Pelosi? Why their sudden embrace of the far left? Virtue signaling?
UpstateFarmer — political opportunism. It’s the Party uber alles.
Political congruence (“=”). That is to say leverage to exploit by choice, force, or deference, but to what end, and at what consequence? They take a knee to the Twilight faith (i.e. conflation of logical domains). They subscribe to the nominally “secular” Pro-Choice, selective, relativistic, opportunistic religion (“ethics”). They advise embracing diversity [dogma] (i.e. color judgment), including: racism, sexism, genderism?, ageism, and other class-based bigotry that denies individual dignity, individual conscience, and intrinsic value, and normalizes color blocs (e.g. “people of color”), color quotas (e.g. “Jew privilege”), and affirmative discrimination. Can they abort the baby, cannibalize her profitable parts, sequester her carbon pollutants, and have her, too? They are playing with a double-edged scalpel.
rwcrampton — Today’s “liberals” have been brought up on a steady diet of Howard Zinn’s leftist lies, hatred for America, and plagiarized history. His writings permeate the schools at every level, and have rotted the brains of many teachers.
“There is little tolerance today, however, for jurists or clerks who reach their own conclusions on the merits of such questions. It is the wrong conclusion so MacDonough or her ruling would have to be removed.”
******************************
“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it–always.”
~Mahatma Gandhi, lawyer
True, but the history of the 20th century demonstrates to us that there is a good deal of bloodshed in the process. Is that where we are heading as this country’s divide grows ever wider?
We’re already there, by religious convention, by Choice, presumably voluntary. Demos-cracy is aborted in darkness… at the Twilight Fringe (i.e. conflation of logical domains).
Suze:
Probably but likely a Coloumbian Civil War mode where the urbanscapes house the liberals; the rural areas are home to the conservatives and the battleground is over the suburbs. Unconventional to be sure but boiling dwon to the basics. The cities have to eat but the farms don’t have to produce.
Plan A: Bernie Sanders is angry again. It’s about the money bag. A $4 trillion dollar money bag.
Plan B: Give me the money, I’ll hide it.
When is Jon going to get wise and dump the Democratic party? Leave it to the dunces who are their main support.
She then added “How much does the current structure benefit us? And I don’t think it does.”
Lets put the shoe on the other foot for a minute…..what if..VP Pence had heeded President Trump and some Members of Congress and had rejected the Electoral College Votes of the States that had questioned voting outcomes?
Would the Democrats have had the same view of ignoring the Rules then?
After all….he was just ONE PERSON making a decision for over Three Hundred Million People.
The Left now must really hate VP Pence for adhering to the Rule of Law….as it is the perfect foil to what they are trying to do now.
But…that only works when one has the ability to feel shame for one’s conduct….and we know that just doesn’t apply to the Leftists pushing their Communist Agenda.
Commie, commie, Bo bomby.
Banana danna foe salamis.
Commies!
Majoritarianism is not democracy but effectively it constitutes dictatorship.
Gee, you mean Democrats are acting like Republicans?
They’re acting like Socialists.
I have warned in posts before that when these people say “By Any Means Necessary” they mean it.
Law, hallowed customs, courtesy, and honesty are seen as obstacles to be brushed aside. This isn’t the Democrat party of Daniel Moynihan; it is closer to the party of Lenin.
True that.
Young,
“By Any Means Necessary” to me is them saying they will do anything and everything to include the illegal, to get their way.
I think they are closer to Mao, then Lenin.
Upstate: You make a good point. I agree.
There are more than enough people on the Republican side who will jump into a fight with no rules.
And the Republicans will have a majority at some point.
Remember Robespierre riding the tumbril?
The worm always turns.
How many people were murdered before Robespierre fell? How many before Savonarola was hanged? How many before Hitler was defeated? And so on… Yes, truth and justice always prevails, but what are the costs?
My wife and I were generally a-political for the first several decades of our married lives together — I now look back on those busy days of making a living and a life together, raising our children, spending time with family and friends, and relaxing whenever it was possible, with gratitude that we had those days, and with a certain sadness that we’ve had to become much more politically engaged that we’d ever thought would be the case as we enter the last 1/3 of our lives together.
Have you considered the possibility that your failure (and others like you) to be politically engaged all those years is the reason for the current situation. You allowed the problems to develop by not involving yourselves in the process. Maybe you should remember the adage ‘in a democracy you don’t get the government you want, you get the government you deserve’. You allowed others to make choices that affected your lives because you were preoccupied with your day to day existence while ignoring your responsibility to participate.
Good old Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, Elizabeth McDonough. We just may survive this illegitimate Brandon administration.