On a related note to Eric’s post yesterday, I argued over at my TrueSlant blog that unlike their modern counterparts, Democrats of the 1960s passed legislation by constitutional means. Here is a snippet:
As Robert Mann showed in his overlooked The Walls of Jericho, Democrats in the 1960s passed civil rights legislation by changing the number of votes required to sustain a filibuster. (The new rule was two-thirds of the Senators present and voting; the previous one “two-thirds of the Senators duly chosen and sworn). Those Democrats — the pre-1972 ones — acted in accordance with the Constitution.