Maybe it's the August heat which makes it especially hot inside the "big tent" that the left populates.  But I'm seeing a lot of calling for this and calling for that which strikes me as representative of that frustration.  Two push-button issues right now seem to be "attacks" on the tenth amendment and calls for the elimination of the filibuster, and rules establishing  decision making by a simple majority in  the Senate. 

One of several variations on the so-called "Chinese Curse" is "may you get what you wish for".  I look back in time and I think one needs to be cautious about this.  For example, take "States Rights" and the Right to Petition Congress--and the story of Old Man Eloquent:  The petition controversy is too long to present in detail--the article is a fascinating account of how politics then, as now, made very strange bedfellows.  John  Quincy Adams defended the right to individuals to petition Congress...including a petition to dissolve the union prepared by Quaker Abolitionists guided behind the scenes by the poet,  John Greenleaf Whittier.  
 The result was an attempt to remove Adams from the House of Representatives.

Adams finally gave the Whigs their long-sought opening--a petition from Haverhill, Massachusetts, probably conceived by John Greenleaf Whittier, though not signed by him, praying for the peaceable dissolution of the Union. No petition so drastic had ever been introduced. Southern members rose in fury, demanding it be burned in the presence of the House. Henry A. Wise of Virginia called for censure, and Thomas F. Marshall of Kentucky, nephew of the Chief Justice, at once drafted the resolution of indictment. The crisis had come; Adams was fighting for his life.

A turn of the hourglass, and it was the same cast of slaveholders who tried to secede.

But I wanted to give you Mr. Smith--in defense of the filibuster.  I don' like the filbuster now, when my party has a majority.  But how will I feel about it when my  party is in the minority?  What chance would Jimmy Stewart have?  Claude Raines would rule. 


It seems that I cannot embed a Google video. But the link will work, I hope. here's the link for one of the great political movies of all time. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-897129633961255565#