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Empathy and The Loving Story
As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama let us know who he would be selecting as judicial nominees.
Where's the "up or down vote" now?
For most of this country's history, when senators wanted to single-handedly steamroll a bill they didn't like, they had to be a lot more dedicated than they do now. Taking advantage of the senate tradition of allowing unlimited debate, a single senator could "filibuster" for as long humanly possible in hopes of running out the clock and getting the bill's supporters to give up and move on. Arguably the most famous such incident was arch-segregationist Strom Thurmond's filibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (a precursor to the more famous 1964 edition), in which he read from, among other things, a Charleston, S.C. phone directory for over 24 hours straight. It's hard to imagine a senator doing that over any kind of legislation today (let alone something, you know, important like the Civil Rights Act).