Word: quorums
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...last week the greatest of all parliaments was in a hopeless muddle. Senators and Representatives, wearied by the terrible grind, their tempers frayed from working at cross-purposes, their distaste for Washington mounting, had gone home in droves. The House could not raise a quorum. The Senate witnessed the shoddy spectacle of two one-man filibusters. Early in the week Missouri's mulish Bennett Champ Clark tied up business for two days, finally forced the Mexican claims bill back into conference...
...three weeks away, and already members are anxious to get to the job of relaxation. Goaded by pleas from the White House, the Army and the Navy, ranking members of the Ways and Means Committee have agreed to try to get something done. They express doubts, however, that a quorum can be obtained with the holidays so near...
Next day, to save their voices, the Southern Senators changed their tactics: they stayed away in droves to prevent a quorum. Majority leader Alben W. Barkley, stubbornly determined to get action, got the Senate to order the arrest of eight missing members who were known to be in Washington. The sergeant at arms' staff routed Nevada's Senator Berkeley L. Bunker out of his office by using a passkey, captured Tennessee's Kenneth McKellar by inducing a chambermaid to unlock his hotel apartment. South Carolina's Senator Burnet R. Maybank, reached at his home by telephone...
...quorum finally rounded up (after three hours and 40 minutes), The Man Bilbo began speaking again. The Senator, never bothered by the doubts and inhibitions that sometimes assail more sensitive men, blurted happily...
...Long." He is keeping his word--and the fire he is raising has all America in a hot spot. "The Man," as the Senator fondly refers to himself, typifies the pro-poll tax bloc. Saturday, their filibuster technique led them into hiding from the Senate to prevent a necessary quorum. That this absurd burlesque of American government was soon righted with a warrant for their arrest in no way diminishes the Axis delight and Allied dismay it must have inspired. The United States, home of democracy, fighting a war in which democracy struggles to survive, can't function because...