The Shameful Legacy of McConnell's Silencing Tactic
WASHINGTON-The member from Massachusetts had had enough. The member from Massachusetts had a lot of patience, as Laura Nyro once would put it, and that was a lot of patience to lose. The member from Massachusetts arose and addressed the Chair.
"Let every gentleman, let every member of this House, ask his own heart with what confidence, with what boldness, with what freedom, with what firmness, he would give utterance to his opinions on this floor, if, for every word, for a mere question asked of the Speaker, involving a question belonging to human freedom, to the rights of man, he was liable to be tried as a felon or an incendiary, and sent to the penitentiary."
The year was 1836. The member from Massachusetts was former president John Quincy Adams. At issue was the right of the people to petition Congress on the subject of abolishing chattel slavery. Such petitions had been banned from the floor of the Congress. Adams thought this was wrong and almost literally died at his desk fighting against it.
If you're looking for the antecedent to Rule 19, by which Senator Professor Warren was denied the right to talk about the nomination of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III to be the attorney general, there it is. The apparently immortal evil of the slave power rose up again in the Congress in a new disguise, and it arose in support of the nomination of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III. He should be so very proud-and the real heartbreak of it all is that he probably is.
UPDATE -- In terms of its direct origins, Senate Rule 19 goes back to an eventful day in February of 1902 when John McLaurin, the junior senator from South Carolina, accused Ben Tillman of Georgia of a "deliberate, wilful lie," and ol' Pitchfork Ben responded by punching McLaurin out. Why are our politics so divisive?
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