Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) has started a campaign to get Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to weaken the filibuster. The website, stopsenatestalling.com has a petition and a letter to Reid which outlines Grayson's reasoning.

...The Senate argues this is a result of their different procedures. The House requires a majority vote to pass legislation, while the Senate supposedly requires a supermajority of 60. But this rule of legislative procedure apparently only applies to Democratic initiatives that help ordinary people. Throughout the administration of President George W. Bush, the Senate passed much of its key legislation by majority vote:

* The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 passed 54-44
* The Energy Policy Act of 2003 passed 57-40
* The Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 passed 51-49
* The Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005 passed 54-44
* The FY2006 budget resolution and Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 passed 52-47
* The Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act passed 55-45
* The FY2007 budget resolution passed 51-49

...The filibuster should apply to the initiatives of both parties or to neither. Why should launching wars, and cutting taxes for the rich, require only 51 votes while saving lives requires 60?

Since the Democrats regained control of the Senate, Republicans have abused the filibuster rule like never before. Until 1970, no session of Congress had more than ten votes on cloture to end a filibuster. Until 2007, the record was 58. But since Democrats regained control of the Senate, filibusters have skyrocketed. The last session had a new record of 112...

As Ezra Klein of The Washington Post writes, only recently has the filibuster been used to demand a 60-vote requirement on all controversial legislation.

In a letter from Mike Manatos, Senate liason to then-President Lyndon Johnson, to Johnson campaign director Larry O'Brien, Manatos outlines the votes needed for Medicare.

Of the 49 votes cast on behalf of Medicare (Gore amendment) on September 2, 1964, we lost two supporters in the last election -- Senators Keating and Salinger.

However, we picked up five new supporters -- Senators Bass, Harris, Kennedy (Robt.), Montoya, and Tydings.

We also had three supporters who missed the vote this year -- Senators Bayh, Hartke, and Kennedy (Ted).

Thus if all our supporters are present and voting we would win by a vote of 55 to 45.

Of course, if we could persuade Senator Russell (who is on the brink) to support Medicare this year our margin should be even greater.

I have written before about the alliances built to fight Medicare back in the 1960's...and yet Manatos was writing of passing it with a vote of 55 to 45. That is something that could never happen today.

Since the 1960's, filibusters have been increasingly used by the minority party to roadblock the majority party.

According to research by UCLA political scientist Barbara Sinclair, there was an average of one filibuster per Congress during the 1950s. That number has grown steadily since and spiked in 2007 and 2008 (the 110th Congress), when there were 52 filibusters. More broadly, according to Sinclair, while 8 percent of major legislation in the 1960s was subject to "extended-debate-related problems" like filibusters, 70 percent of major bills were so targeted during the 110th Congress.

Read that again: from 8 percent--pretty infrequently--to 70 percent, or rule of the day. (These data come from Sinclair and from her chapter in CQ Press's Congress Reconsidered.)

And yet as Grayson notes, filibuster wasn't used to block Bush on much of the administration's key legislation. But the Republicans are doing now to kill any progress Obama might be able to make. And make no mistake, that is expressly their goal.

Early in his Presidency, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin and Rick Santorum all declared their wish for Obama to fail. Long before the offensive anti-Obama Psalm 109:8 movement raised its ugly head, Ted Nugent prayed for Obama to fail.

I could argue that this kind of gamesmanship will continue indefinitely as long as our country is held under the stranglehold of the two party system. Voting third party is seen as throwing a vote away and the two parties work together to control political debate. That being said, I actually agree with Rep. Alan Grayson that the threshold should be lowered to 55 votes.

This is a new and disgusting era in politics where each side will do whatever it takes to gain and maintain power. The juvenile infighting and use of congressional loopholes to slow legislation to a crawl (or kill it entirely) without ever getting a fair vote on a bill will end all progress for the foreseeable future.

While many right-wingers might be just fine with that...remember, one day this move will be used on you. One day you will have the majority and the minority will be able to force you to a dead stop. That isn't how congress is supposed to work. It is supposed to work for the people...not for two teams of adults to act like spoiled children regardless of the damage it does to the country.