Quoting John Kerry

About two years ago I removed every "political" post from my blog thinking that commentary just didn't belong here.  A few years before that, the Democrats held the minority position in both houses.  At that time, the main stream media were calling out every parliamentary maneuver as "obstruction" and actually using the word "filibuster".  On the other hand, yesterday the media reported Senator Bunning's outlandish obstructionism only as "Senate Gridlock".  The following is a snippet of a post by Senator Kerry in the blog Talking Points Memo:

In the last Congress, the Republican minority more than doubled the previous record for filibusters, and they are on a pace to challenge or surpass that "accomplishment" this Congress as well. And filibusters are only the most obvious part of it.

On issue after issue, votes large and small, the strategy from the GOP at the highest levels has been the same: exploiting every Senate rule, playing every trick to try to slow things down. They put holds on bills that later pass by 90 votes, filibuster things they later vote for, block things they previously proposed. They used the filibuster to shoot down a debt commission that they themselves called on President Obama to implement! They block completely uncontroversial nominees and cause days of delays on the most critical of legislation. They even stalled on money for our troops last year, just to try to delay debate on health care reform.