As usual, I responded to one of the political emails I got today. Sen. Kennedy wanted me to voice why I opposed the "nuclear" option.
More below:
You too can join in the fun by going
here.
Anyway, here's what I wrote. Flame away!
My ancestors fought to create this country. One of my ever so great grandfathers signed the Declaration of Independence. His younger half-brother took the notes from the Constitutional Convention and wrote the Constitution.
The Senate rules say that 2/3rds of the Senators have to vote to change one of the Senate's rules. That means it takes 67 Senators to kill the filibuster. There is no Constitutional guarantee that the Senate has to vote up or down on any law, treaty, or appointment.
Your plan to have 51 Senators or 50 along with Vice President Cheney's tie-breaker gut Senate rules is totally outrageous. You're trying to destroy the independence of the Senate and make it a rubber stamp for the Executive Branch. If the Senate is just a rubber stamp to the Executive Branch's judicial nominee's that destroys the independence of the Judiciary as well. That's the recipe for a dictatorship.
Your plan is a violation of the faith your constituents placed in you to honor, uphold and defend the Constitution. The Constitution set out three independent branches of government in order to spread power out. If my ever so great grand uncle and his peers had intended to have a strong Executive Branch and a rubber stamp Legislative Branch and a dependent Judiciary, they would have written the Constitution that way. They did not. The were justly afraid of concentrating too much power in any of the branches of the government.
By pursuing your so called "nuclear" option, you're joining the ranks of traitors to our country like Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. I urge you to honor you oath of office to uphold and defend the Constitution, not spit on it and destroy it.