Or Neverland. Through the looking glass. Down the rabbit hole. Just …. out of the way.
The Senate voted on Thursday to keep a proposal to block gun sales to terrorism suspects alive …
Sounds like the start of a promising paragraph. But this is the Senate. The Mitch McConnell Senate.
… but placed it in a procedural limbo that made its adoption unlikely anytime soon.
Why was it important that the bill depart this earth for lands unknown? It suffered from a terrible, terrible problem. People might have passed it.
The compromise measure, drafted by Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, had emerged as the one piece of legislation since the mass shooting in Orlando, Fla., with a chance of winning bipartisan support and passage in Congress. ...
That left [Republican leadership] in a quandary of how to stall the measure without allowing Democrats to gloat that Republicans were so opposed to tighter gun restrictions that they defeated even a bill offered by a member of their own party.
However, the ever vigilant super turtle team, keenly aware that passing legislation causes puppies to cry, did one of those things that only makes sense to the powerfully developed irony senses of senators. They voted not to table the bill. Tabling a bill means postponing or suspending a vote, so voting to not table a bill … shouldn’t that mean the bill comes up for a vote? Foolish mortal!
By voting not to table it, Republicans could keep it alive without advancing or defeating it outright — putting it in a sort of legislative purgatory.
Purgatory. I left that one off the earlier list. I can think of another place, too. One with a door marked “Abandon all hope...”