Hasnain says:

I needed something to read for 10 minutes so I got curious and looked up some stuff on the filibuster and had to suffer through this article so I’m sharing it here in case anyone else wants to do similarly.

Jokes aside the content here is still somewhat relevant for the historical analysis even though we can now see which predictions worked out and which ones didn’t.

“Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson had staged the all-night session in a desperate attempt to break a Southern filibuster against a voting rights bill. His army of Northern Democrats and party-of-Lincoln Republicans were sleeping on Army cots nearby, ready to show up groggily for 3 a.m. quorum calls to prevent the Senate from adjourning. Meanwhile, 18 members of the segregationist Southern Caucus held the floor in four-hour shifts, which was about as long as their legs could take it. As North Carolina Senator Sam Ervin (later the hero of the Watergate hearings) said after ending his stint at the microphone, “My throat is fine, but I could feel it in my knees.””

Posted on 2022-01-25T07:30:54+0000