Senate majority leader Democrat Harry Reid has just thrown out the rule book for filibusters in the Senate.
Story here:
By a vote of 52-48, the Senate invoked the so-called “nuclear option” to change the historic filibuster rules of the upper chamber. As a result, the minority party will be prevented from filibustering any nominations other than those to the Supreme Court.
"It's time to change the Senate before the institution becomes obsolete,” Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday morning on the Senate floor ahead of the unprecedented alteration to centuries-old rules regarding the power of the minority party to contest Senate business.
“The need for change is so, so very obvious,” he said. “It’s manifest [that] we have to do something to change things.”
... lawmakers lamented that if the party in power can change the rules, then rules are meaningless.
