The best argument against the filibuster is also the most obvious one . . .

. . . For anyone who doubts whether the filibuster is contrary to the intent of the framers of the Constitution, here's a simple question they can ask themselves that should provide immediate clarity:

If the framers had intended to require a [de facto] 60-vote majority in order to pass regular legislation, why would they have bothered to designate the Vice President to be a tie-breaking vote, since there never would have been any tie votes to worry about?

An alternative hypothesis on the Georgia Shooter

I'm going to propose an alternative theory about the shooter in Georgia. You may agree or disagree, but please hear me out.

I don't for a minute wish to minimize in any way the problem of the surge in anti-Asian bias crimes. It's a real problem and we need to address it. But based on what the shooter himself told police, some additional details that have been reported, and certain on-the-ground realities no one seems to want to talk about, what I see is a profoundly disturbed young man whose Southern Baptist church's obsession with sex as the primary locus of sin seriously messed with his head. Hence he came to view the women at these businesses, which he had frequented as a patron, as his "temptresses." And as some Christian men have done for a couple of millennia, he found it easier to place the locus of what his Church was telling him was his "sin" outside of himself, and blame the women instead.

As for those on-the-ground realities, here's what I'm talking about.: in just about any major metropolitan area in this country, one can find these Asian-owned and staffed massage parlors. Here in NYC, it's an open secret that these places, while operating ostensibly as legitimate businesses that indeed offer massage, the 'massage therapists' who work in many of them will offer, um, additional services, for an additional fee. And the fact of the matter is that these kinds of massage parlors are operated almost exclusively by Asians these days. So the fact that so many of the victims were Asian may have been merely incidental to the fact of who happens to own and work in them. And indeed, it has been reported that workers at one of the businesses involved were indeed arrested last year on prostitution charges, after one of them offered sexual services to an undercover cop.

Here is what I see as a very possible scenario: a 21-year-old, unstable young man, with hormones in overdrive, begins frequenting these places, and begins to take advantage of their "additional services." And he finds himself returning again and again for more gratification. Meanwhile, his church is feeding him a pathological view of his own sexuality (wouldn't exactly be the first time a Christian church did this, now would it?), essentially shaming him for enjoying the experiences he has been having, and in his emotionally confused and unstable state, the conflict becomes too much.

Look, none of this makes the shootings any less horrific, and I fully understand why it would appear to be racially motivated by many Asians who are already experiencing a wave of bias crimes. And indeed, it is quite possible that he does harbor racist views. But it is also quite possible that by reductively labeling it an Anti-Asian hate crime, we may be missing an important part of the picture.

What would James Madison have said about the filibuster?

I have been beyond perplexed by President Biden's stated desire to retain the filibuster. He keeps holding out hope that he will somehow be able to find common ground with Senate Republicans, as he did back in his days in the Senate. But this is not the same GOP we are dealing with (despite a few holdovers from his Senate days). I began to wonder what James Madison, the chief architect of the constitution, would have thought of the filibuster. And in Federalist Nos. 58 and 22, I found my answer.

in Federalist No. 58, defending the Constitution against supermajority requirements in all but a few constitutionally-defined circumstances, Madison wrote: