Comfortable Disappearance

That’s what reporters called the fillibuster when Senator Jefferson Smith of Montana fillibustered the appropriation for Willett Creek Dam in Frank Capra’s 1939 film, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”
Now, Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist calls Democrats obstructionists for filibustering the most far-right ideological judicial nominess of President Bush’s. Of course, the Republican spin-masters call this the “constitutional option,” as opposed to preferred nomenclature of Democrats, the “nuclear option.” Now, if the 14 moderate Senators wouldn’t have given in and agreed to use the filibuster in only unique circumstance, Frist would have blown up the Senate to get Bush’s nominess pushed through.

Why is it that Democrats get all the blame? President Bush gets only sympathy because the Republican spin machine says so. President Bush nominates judges SO extreme that it nearly forces the Senate to change the rules that have governed the most-respected legislative institution in the world for the past centuries? Wow, the spin-master blow me away.

Thank you Frank Capra for making such a brilliant film, showing “democracy in action” in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”