New York Times Article Avoids the Word "Filibuster" When Discussing Vote on Webb Amendment

If you click on the link in this entry's title, you can read an article in the New York Times about the Senate's vote on the Jim Webb amendment requiring that troops spend as much time at home as they spent in Iraq before being reployed. This is the headline: "Senate Narrowly Backs Bush in Rejecting Debate on Increasing Time Between Deployments".

Now if you just read the headline, you would believe that a bare majority of United States Senators voted against the Webb amendment and you would be wrong. Actually 56 Senators voted for cloture on the Webb amendment and 41 voted against cloture. Now, here is where it gets really interesting.

Cloture is invoked when a piece of legislation is threatened with a filibuster. Under the Rules of the United States Senate, 60 votes are needed to cut off debate. So what happened on the cloture vote on the Webb amendment was that 56 Senators voted to cut off debate and 41 Senators voted to allow a filibuster. Guess what? The New York Times article never uses the word "filibuster" in discussing this vote.

Now, the Times had no problem using the word "filibuster" when discussing Democratic opposition to appointing right-wing nut-jobs to the Federal bench, but, when it comes to discussing Republican Senators voting against cutting off debate on the Webb amendment, they get a case of the vapors and refuse to call the tactic by its proper name. Here's a spelling lesson for the media: Republican Senators are engaging in F-I-L-I-B-U-S-T-E-R-s to block Democratic leglislation on the Iraq War and other issues. If you use the word, the world won't come crashing down on you. Try it, you'll see.