I made a couple of slight mis-types here. I should’ve written…

Jim Crow laws themselves were passed by constitutional, democratically-elected state legislatures. Jim Crow laws were a democratic expression of the will of the majority in southern states.

In large part, I believe the procedures in place currently are good the way they stand, including the filibuster and the supermajority rule. We’ve been fiddling around with this government for hundreds of years, tweaking it here and there, and it’s evolved to the point it has because that’s how it seems to work for us at this point. I support the right of Bill Frist to want to get rid of the filibuster, I just don’t agree that it should be done. Perhaps in the future a majority will agree, and then it’ll continue to evolve.

I only consider it “trampling” if the minority has no way to check the majority’s power. If they hav e no tools like the filibuster to help them ensure they get a say in matters, then the majority won’t have any reason to give them any respect. It’s human nature to seize power where it’s available, and that’s what would happen if tools like the filibuster were removed.

I don’t have a problem with media pointing out that the anti-lynching laws were filibustered. I agree that they should. I have a problem with Martinez’s argument that the filibuster should be eliminated because it can be used in this way. He fails, like so many other anti-filibuster people fail, to see the bigger picture in all this, which is one reason why I’m taking him to task.

The other reason is that he says the resolution to apologize should have mentioned the filibuster. As I said in the post, this is stupid. An “apology” that attempts to give an excuse like “it was the filibuster’s fault!” is not only not an apology, it’s a coward’s way out. If the resolution had included language attempting to explain away the Senate’s fault in not passing the anti-lynching laws, it would have been both embarassing and disgusting, and I’m disgusted with Martinez for suggesting that’s how we should have done it.

I’ll grant you that if you define evil in the more narrow sense you do, perhaps Martinez doesn’t think that the filibuster is evil. But that’s your opinion, and unless Martinez himself joins this discussion, we won’t know for sure. However, this is semantics, and missing the point. Pretend I said “actively harmful” in its place.

Lastly, I purposefully didn’t equate the “mob” with Republicans, as you suggest I did. I hold the same opinion no matter who is the majority and who is the minority. I want the filibuster in place, and just as powerful, because if it’s not there, the Senate majority, whoever it is, will always be able to do as it pleases, and the minority will get trampled, and that’s not something I ever want to see happen.

The problem is, evil isn’t something you should have to infer. You have to do a pretty frenetic dance there to get to “evil” from “anti-democratic.” I’ll tell you what I consider evil: Adolf Hitler. Osama bin Laden. Saddam Hussein. Josef Stalin. The September 11 hijackers. I take evil very seriously, and while I seriously question the actions of a lot of people on the left, both in the government and in the media, I’d hate to be thought of as calling them “evil” merely for that reason. Because I don’t think that. At all. And I would question the wisdom of anyone who did call them evil just because–horror of horrors–they disagreed with them. In my universe, evil takes a heck of a lot more than that.

“If Martinez wants a complete and utter democracy, then why do we even have our representative republic in place?”

It is an enormous–and, I feel, unfair–leap in logic to suggest that because Martinez is against the filibuster, he’s against representative government in the democratic process. I have a feeling that you would never accept that as an argument (a very loose term) if it were made against you, because the second thing simply can’t be inferred from the first thing. As I see it, Martinez is obviously in favor of representative government, because he thinks the filibuster subverts it, and allows the minority power that they didn’t earn by virtue of the representative process. This allows good things to happen, yes, but it also allows terrible things to happen, like the filibustering of anti-lynching laws by Senate Democrats or the filibustering of major judicial appointees for spurious reasons by, once again, Senate Democrats.

Regardless of where you stand on the issue, though, it’s disingenuous of the Los Angeles Times or anyone else to not acknowledge the role of the filibuster in the non-passing of the anti-lynching legislation. It’s absolutely, positively relevant, and news organizations unwilling to highlight that fact deserve to be taken to task for it, and I’m glad Martinez did just that in his story. I expect it to change absolutely nothing, but your response to that story tells me a lot more about you and your own prejudices than it does anything that Martinez said.