| Yeah, I've been wondering if it will amount to anything as well. My gut tells me that it won't. That said, I've had it running for around and hour and have found it interesting for no other reason than understanding how filibusters actually work. From what I can tell, he has just been spending time reading articles critical of drone strikes or reading other documents while providing commentary on them as he goes. He's even been taking time to eat a snack which provides comedic pauses in the listening experiences. Rand also gets small breaks from others who come forward to ask questions - most of which seem to be staged to help him cover additional points, reiterate his already made points, or just generally use up more clock. Based on the view behind him, it appears that all other senators need not be present while he speaks. Is that true and has this always been the case? I'd imagine that the tactic might be more compelling and useful if everyone had to sit there and listen. |
While the House puts some limits on debates, to move things along, the Senate is a more deliberative body (by design) and therefore doesn't vote on an issue until it has been completely debated. There is no strict definition of "completely debated" beyond "someone still has something to say." As any half-awake hacker no doubt will notice, this means that you can prevent a law from getting voted on, and therefore passing, by simply not ending the debate. This is what a filibuster is.
There are technically some restrictions around debate, and the band-aid fix that a supermajority vote can stop debate and bring a vote, but that's about the only thing stopping it in practice.
The main technical restriction is that, if the Senate doesn't have anything else to do, any one Senator only gets one monologue. They can't stop one day, and then filibuster again the next day. This rule can be stretched, but not broken. Hence, the content of most filibusters tend to be long space-fillers, which is what you're seeing. There's also a rule that the debate must be 'on topic,' but that's too vaguely defined to be worth anything. Famously, one Senator said something to the effect of "this law is not in the interests of my constituents, who are as follows:" and then proceed to literally read the phone book for a few hours.