Mitch McConnell is, by far, the most powerful Republican in Washington.
The senior senator from the Bluegrass State is, as we said on January 19, a Master of the Senate, just as LBJ was (https://www.apocryphalpress.com/2021/01/19/will-mcconnell-vote-to-confirm-judge-merrick-garland-as-attorney-general-will-he-vote-to-convict-trump/).
Mitch was always Senator No the last time we had a decent President (2009-2017), always and forever promoting what is now the McConnell SCOTUS.
Mitch was all in for Donald Trump until the Electoral College spoke, but after Trump launched The Trump Insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, he’s had second thoughts; and he may even
follow Senators Romney, Collins, and Murkowski in voting to convict the Leader of his Party in the Senate, now that Speaker Pelosi has sent the Article of Impeachment to Senator Leahy as
President pro tempore of the Senate, ‘cause Chief Justice John Roberts has better things to do, like preserving the independence of the judiciary that Trump did his level best to destroy.
McConnell’s hell bent on preserving the Filibuster now that he’s the Senate Minority Leader.
So we asked our DC-based Chief Associate Solitary Reporter, Keith Coleman, a Democratic operative of wide renown, and the University of Michigan School of Law’s most prominent alumnus, to
refresh our recollection of how the filibuster came to be.
Coleman’s report, shorter by far than the Mueller Report, begins with South Carolina’s John C. Calhoun (1782-1850).
Known as one of the Great Triumvirate, along with Henry Clay (1777-1852) and Daniel Webster (1782-1852), of legislative and political leaders in the early days of our Republic, John C.
Calhoun was a major proponent of nullification, by which he insisted that South Carolina could refuse to comply with tariffs passed by Congress in 1828 and 1832.
Calhoun was Vice President under President John Quincy Adams and President Andrew Jackson (remember how when Donald Trump was in the White House, a portrait of "Old Hickory" (President
Jackson) was given great prominence? No doubt Trump liked that portrait because Jackson was responsible for the Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears, in which thousands of Cherokees and
Chickasaws were forced to walk from our Southeast to Indian Territory, now known as Oklahoma).
Although used by the House of Representatives for a time, the filibuster, a fave of McConnell, began in earnest shortly after slaveowner John Calhoun died (https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Filibuster_Cloture.htm), but
Calhoun, by then a strong and powerful defender of the South and State’s Rights, would have approved; and since then, McConnell has used the filibuster as a cudgel.
And now that he’s no longer Majority Leader, Mitch insists on keeping it (https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/25/mitch-mcconnell-agrees-senate-filibuster-462466)
So we asked associate solitary reporter Sylvania Juguete (recently our top associate solitary reporter covering South America), who is with President Biden 24/7, what the President intends to
do about the filibuster, given that he served in the Senate from 1973 to 2009 and has known McConnell since 1985, and before.
“SR,” Juguete said, “that’s a hard thing for Joe, ‘cause he’s got a lot on his plate."
By coincidence, PBS' Jeffrey Brown, who covers topics including the arts for Judy Woodruff’s NewsHour, interviewed, today, Michel Hausman, the director of an innovative and creative program
in Miami to keep theatres open and playwrights and actors employed. The physically distanced audience sees the short play, and the actors can see the audience.
In one segment, Brown showed us one short play in which slaveaholder Calhoun appears as a statue, and he asks the audience if his statue should be taken down.
Associate solitary reporter Jim Mangan, who, from time to time, reports to us on all things Florida, is, as of press time, conducting a survey of the audiences’ responses to Calhoun’s
inquiry.