http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Opinion/010613SUNedit

The U.S. Senate is proof of the messiness of representative democracy.

Its rules are arcane, occasionally weird and at times nonsensical. Take the way the Senate allows its members to “filibuster.” Filibustering used to require senators to stand before their colleagues and actually talk a bill to death. That requirement doesn’t exist these days. Senators can just say they oppose something … and then they can vacate the chamber and go about their business, whatever that may be.

The rules ought to restored to the old way.

I kind of like the image of watching senators talk until they pass out. They can talk about anything they want once the filibuster commences. Except that nowadays none of that is required.

To unblock the bill, the Senate now requires a 60-vote supermajority. One idea being kicked around is to allow the so-called “cloture” vote to pass with a simple majority of just 51 votes.

But the best reform is to require senators to stand up and be counted. Don’t they all talk about the need for transparency in government?

The record time for a filibuster belongs to the late Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who in 1957, blabbed for 24 hours 18 minutes as he railed – during his segregationist days – against a civil rights bill. The previous record was held by my favorite Senate curmudgeon, the late Wayne Morse of Oregon, who yakked for 22 hours 26 minutes in 1953.

Those were the days when the world’s Greatest Deliberative Body forced members to earn their pay. By golly, if they felt strongly enough about something, they ought to be forced to work for it.

As the Santa Fe New Mexican said in an editorial, senators “should talk and talk and talk, without stopping, so that the whole world sees who is gumming up the works.”