Senate Rule 19, and the stupidity thereof:
I wrote this on Facebook a moment ago, and it deserves to be preserved somewhere a little less noisy. After finally having time to watch the whole debacle with Elizabeth Warren, Mitch McConnell, and Senate Rule 19, it's abundantly clear to me that rule 19 is stupid! In Modern English, which a rule written over 100 years ago does not resemble, it says that senators are not allowed to suggest that other senators have motives inappropriate to being a senator. It doesn't matter if the phrasing is polite, or supported by evidence, or anything else. It is apparently an article of faith that those who have managed to get themselves elected to the senate are beyond reproach, which is a strange thing to take on faith these days! The only thing the rule seems to get right is that you can't get out of it by quoting someone else and arguing that "I didn't actually say those nasty things about a senator, 'my friend' said those things." However, there are ...