Harry Has A Hissy

RESIST!

"The vote today, I think, is an indication that a majority of senators believe as I believe that enough is enough," Obama said at the White House.  "The American people’s business is far too important to keep falling prey day after day to Washington politics."Decrying the past "abuse of arcane procedural tactics" to block legislation and nominations, Obama conceded that neither party is blameless in creating gridlock on Capitol Hill"But today’s pattern of obstruction isn't normal," he added. "It’s not what our founders envisioned."

Oh really?

"If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin."
-- Samuel Adams (1722–1803)

"Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon the American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality, become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole society. "
-- John Adams, Novanglus Letters, 1774

"I am a mortal enemy to arbitrary government and unlimited power. I am naturally very jealous for the rights and liberties of my country, and the least encroachment of those invaluable privileges is apt to make my blood boil."
-- Ben Franklin

"The greatest [calamity] which could befall [us would be] submission to a government of unlimited powers."
-- Thomas Jefferson, Declaration and Protest of Virginia, [1825]

"A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever."
--John Adams in a Letter to Abigail Adams (July 7, 1775)

"The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite."
-- Thomas Jefferson

The Blaze:

Senate Passes ‘Nuclear Option’ Fundamentally Changing Filibuster Power — but There Were Three Democrats Who Voted to Stop It

The Democrat-controlled Senate voted Thursday to invoke the so-called “nuclear option,” making it possible to confirm most presidential nominees by a simple majority vote.

But not all Democrats were on board with the change.

Thursday’s vote marked a major shift in more than 200 years of Senate precedent that required a 60-vote majority to assure a final vote on most presidential nominees. The “nuclear option,” however, means only 51 votes are required to confirm most judicial and executive nominees.

Supreme Court appointees are still exempt form the rule change. Also, it’s important to note that this vote doesn’t block other filibusters like Kentucky Senator Rand Paul’s nearly 13-hour marathon speech against President Barack Obama’s drone program.

Thursday’s “nuclear option” vote only applies to most judicial and executive nominees.

“It shows you just how desperate and cynical Democrats have become,” one Senate Republican aide told TheBlaze. “They have proven willing to destroy a defining and historic aspect of the Senate in order to distract from their disastrous health care law and the harm it’s inflicting on the American people right now.”

“Unfortunately, while their ploy may help them in the news cycle for a few days, Americans will still be suffering all the while,” the aide added.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) accused Republicans Thursday of “unbelievable, unprecedented obstruction” of the president’s selections for court vacancies and other offices.

“It’s time to change the Senate, before this institution becomes obsolete,” Reid said.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), for his part, accused Democrats of trying to distract from the ongoing disaster that has been the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, adding that Democrats would later come to regret the rule change.

“When Democrats were in the minority they argued strenuously for the very thing they now say we will have to do without, namely the right to extend a debate on lifetime appointments. In other words, they believe that one set of rules should apply to them and another set to everybody else,” he said.

McConnell reminded his colleagues Reid said in 2012 he wouldn’t try to change the process of approving appointees.

“He may as well just have said, `If you like the rules of the Senate, you can keep them,’” McConnell said, referring to the president’s oft-repeated promise that Americans could keep their insurance under Obamacare.

“Senator Reid is breaking over 100 years of years of precedence in order to get his way,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said in a statement. “Reid is a bully, dictating to the Senate.”

Democratic Sens. Mark Pryor (Ark.), Joe Manchin (W.V.) and Carl Levin (Mich.) voted with Republicans against the rule change.