Issue in - very - brief

The filibuster - that peculiar Senate rule that, in effect, requires 60 votes for any controversial vote to pass - skated on thin ice in 2005. The Senate Republican leadership, frustrated with the number of judges that Democrats nixed in Bush's first term using filibusters - and leary of any future struggles to approve controversial judges - threatened to dump the filibuster rule for judicial approvals (but not for other non-budget bills.)

A short term truce was worked out by moderate Republican and Democrat senators in late May, 2005 but that compromise could still crack. If it does, and Republicans vote to remove the filibuster, Democrats have vowed to go legally ballistic, pulling out every obscure procedural rule to bring the Senate to a halt (except for bills relating to national security, they say).

What exactly is a filibuster? Congress has all sorts of rules that say how votes get made. In the Senate, in order for any bill to go up for a vote, senators must first vote to end debate on the bill - called "cloture." If 60 senators don't for cloture - or put the other way, if 41 senators vote against cloture - the bill never goes up for a final vote, in effect, killing the bill. That's a filibuster. Senators can filibuster most bills and votes for presidential appointees, but the rules don't allow a filibuster for spending bills.

The (oversimplified) debate: Democrats say that without the judicial filibuster, Bush will be able to place extremist judges on the bench. Republicans say the rule has to change to keep Democrats from obstructing the work of the Senate. But some moderate Republicans are not going for the filibuster bashing; they see the filibuster as a good way to keep the Senate moderate - after all, if sixty votes are needed to okay controversial decisions, a majority party with less than sixty seats always has to cooperate with folks across the aisle. (WP)

Updated January 14, 2006.

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