Pete Bungum's BLOG - Day 26,068 in my journey through life.

Today is Thursday, May 10, 2012 - a beautiful sinny day with temps in the 70s (I'm going golfing an an hour).I,m grateful for another day of "I'm HIV."

Today I did yoga, the exercise ball and walked for 60 minutes = 3.3 milesfor a May total of 24.3 miles. My weight jumped to 164.0 pounds.

Yesterday I wrote about the 60-vote rule in the U.S. Senate. I said I would do some research and find out out why. Here is what I learned. (from Wikipedia)

What is happening in the Senate is something called "cloture" (or "closure" or, informally, a "guillotine.")
CLOTURE is the French word for "ending" or "conclusion." This procedure originated in the French National Assembly. It was introduced into the British Parliament to overcome the obstruction of the Irish nationalist party and was made permanent in 1887. It was subsequently adopted by the U.S. Senate and other legislatures.

This "cloture" procedure was invoked for the first time on November 15, 1919, during the 66th Congress, to end the filibuster on the Treaty of Versailles. The cloture rule originally required a two-thirds majority of all senators. So if all 100 senators were present and voting it would,take 67 senators to stop debate on a bill.

The cloture rule was changed in 1975. The Senate had 62 Democrats and that was enough to change  the cloture rule down to 60. But as a compromise it always had to be 60 votes becasue the wording of the law now read "duly chosen and sworn" instead of "present and voting."

There have been attempts to change it to a simple majority of 51 but it has never passed because it would greatly diminish the ability of the minority to check the majority. So 60 votes will always be  needed to stop debate on a bill.