Filibuster II

Here's an article in today's NY Times about the filibuster in the Senate, one of Daschle's key political legacies.  Excerpt:

FILIBUSTER UNDER FIRE

Henry Clay Hated It. So Does Bill Frist.

By SCOTT SHANE

Published: November 21, 2004

American Movie Classics When Jimmy Stewart filibustered in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," audiences cheered. It's been downhill ever since. <> <> TIMES NEWS TRACKER   Topics Alerts United States Politics and Government Congress Legislatures and Parliaments History Track news that interests you.

ASHINGTON — "Half of official Washington is here to see democracy's finest show, the filibuster. The right to talk your head off! The American privilege of free speech in its most dramatic form!" - A reporter in the climactic scene of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," 1939.

In the long, colorful history of the filibuster, an extra-constitutional accident of Senate history that has become an institution, perhaps no performance exceeded that of the populist Democratic senator, Huey P. Long, of Louisiana.

Hoping to stave off a bill that would have given his political enemies at home lucrative New Deal jobs, Mr. Long took the floor on June 12, 1935. He read the Constitution and the plays of Shakespeare. He offered up a recipe for fried oysters and a formula for Roquefort dressing. He asked his exhausted colleagues to suggest topics for his monologue. When they wouldn't oblige, he invited reporters in the press gallery to pass down suggestions.

Only at 4 a.m. did the urgent call of nature put an end to Mr. Long's 15-hour soliloquy. Yet this is not the Senate record. That dubious honor belongs to Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who held up the 1957 civil rights bill for a brain-numbing 24 hours and 18 minutes.