Filibuster is only tool available to minority party

GETTING IT RIGHTBILL WOODALL

Why would the newspaper lend credibility to an anonymously-written letter? Some years ago, when the Republicans were filibustering a Clinton bill, Sen Orrin Hatch of Utah, noted that the filibuster is the only tool available to the minority party when they want to protect the interests of that minority.

The need to keep Democrats from running roughshod over the Republicans during those Clinton years kept alive a 200-year tradition in the U.S. Senate, a tradition designed to protect the two-party system by keeping the minority party functioning – even if only barely – during a period when the other party enjoys a clear majority.

Now the Republicans hold the majority in Washington and the Democrats are the ones doing the filibustering, using that same tool to prevent the appointment of cerain federal judges -- appointments dear to the hearts of some Republicans and President Bush.

The terminology is confusing but the principal is fairly clear: debate may be kept alive until ended by cloture vote. While most Senate proceedings survive or fail on the strength of a simple majority, a cloture vote must be approved by a 60 percent majority. In a 100-member Senate, that’s a difference of nine votes...a significant difference.

The cloture rule is not spelled out in the Constitution. It was merely adopted a couple of centuries ago as one of the rules of the Senate, rules which the Senate is allowed -- by a simple majority -- to change. So, despite the rhetoric, the Constitution is not at risk. What is at risk, though, is the notion that in a two-party system the minority must be allowed a voice if they are to remain viable. At risk is the idea that it’s okay to have two political parties with some fundamental differences..

Sen. Bill Frist (Tennessee) and Hatch are among those upset that the Democrats are filibustering the judicial appointments. Frist and other conservative senators are leading the charge to have the senate rules changed. Frist has gone on the offensive, turning the debate over judicial appointments into a debate over Christian values, arguing that those who oppose Presiden Bush’s judicial nominees are opposed to Christianity.

The Democrats counter that it is possible to have Christian values and yet oppose those nominated by a president whose values are reflected in his nominations.

Certainly some good judges are not being seated as a result of the Democrats’ filibusters and certainly , for the judiciary to function with anything resembling efficiency, those empty benches must be filled.

Itseems clear from here that representative democracies were designed specifically to prevent the kind of effeciencies that exist around the world in countries where only one political party is allowed a voice.

Stronger than those opinions though, is this: If filibustering - and arguments over judicial appointments - is part of the price we pay to maintain a strong two-party system, then I say, “let’s hear it for filibusters.”

It is my fervent hope that Texas’ senators, John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchinson, feel the same way.

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OMBUDSMAN IN ACTION

Last weekend’s News Herald and the mid-week Liberty City Topic s circulated in the Sabine school district included a story about an anonymous letter circulating in the Liberty City area. Several readers have taken us to task, including a couple of letters to the editor, over that story.

Why, they asked, would the newspaper lend credibility to an anonymously-written letter?

First, we didn’t editorialize about it. We merely reported on the existence of a letter that was being circulated – between school teachers and others – and which might, if taken at face value, affect the outcome of the school board election there. Our goal was not to shape the election -- and certainly not to shape opinions about the people ridiculed in the letter. Our goal — our job, for that matter — is to report what’s going on in the community around us and the conversations our neighbors are having about public events.

Based on the phone calls we received, the letter and the campaign are surely the topics of conversation in Liberty City.

We often write news stories that are based on something other than personal opinion. We often even write stories that cast our own political opinions in a less-than-favorable light. We often write news stories that are, despite what some readers think, written to inform and not to take sides in a controversy.

The story about the letter was one of those stories.