Scanning the news coverage this morning of the White House health summit, I kept seeing phrases like "a parliamentary maneuver known as reconciliation." I couldn't help wonder -- if reconciliation, which is admittedly not a pretty way to pass health reform, is a "parliamentary maneuver" with all the negativity that phrase connotes, what is a filibuster? Have we become so inured to the constant use of the filibuster, allowing a minority to grind the Senate to a halt, that we have forgotten that it is arguably the mother-of-all parliamentary maneuvers?
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