FRANKEN FACES MOB RULE.

WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE US SENATE?

The nation’s Founders must be spinning in their tombs.  The premiere debating chamber the Founders instituted has hit on hard times.  This body is the chamber the Founders envisioned where thoughtful commentary, advice and consent was to reign—not mob rule.  Touted as the staid upper chamber of the Congress, and called the “the most exclusive club” by Lewis Gould in his book of that name.     In this august chamber the great debates of the nation took place, were discussed and acted on.   Here the Civil rights Act of 1964, the Impeachment of President Johnson in 1868 (and more than a century later that of William Clinton)  and the celebrated  60 Day Debate over the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations in 1919.  Here too the watershed issue of slavery was debated, culminating in the famous Compromise of 1850 which attempted to avoid Civil War and in which the greatest statesmen of the time: Henry Clay,  John Calhoun, and Daniel Webster competed to sway the Senate.  

That was the past.  Today’s Senate is far different.  The great issue facing our modern senators is  not war and peace, threat of nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula, or crises of the day but: “alleged” sexual harassment.  Yes the Senate is engrossed in ALLEGATIONS of sexual misdeeds arising in the press, and which have mostly occurred not in recent times, but in the distant past.  Some of the allegations are reported from elderly alleged female victims from the misty past of four decades ago.  

Most recently we are barraged with allegations of improper behavior of Senator Al Franken.  I am not a great supporter of Senator Franken, but I do think that he deserves a fair hearing before he is forced  out of the Senate by his colleagues  simply on allegation appearing in the press presented by anonymous and identified accusers who have only to make a claim of an improper grab, hug or an attempted kiss.   Are these unsubstantiated allegations enough to destroy a man’s whole Senate career and his reputation?  

The modern Senate is not a debating and discussion chamber. The Senators simply act like    lemmings—-all  running Pell Mel in the same direction.    No debate.  No due process.  Just mob rule. 

Mob rule is the antithesis of senatorial debate. 

What has happened to the Senate?