Shep Smith suggests viewers better off Googling

Run time: 04:08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGFlxod6ljc   Posted on YouTube: August 25, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: August 31, 2009 By DU Member: democracy1st Views on DU: 539

 
Fox News continues to falsely claim Dems considering "changing the rules" to pass health care

Fox News anchor Jamie Colby falsely characterized Senate Democrats passing health care reform legislation with a simple majority through a process known as reconciliation as "potentially changing the rules with the nuclear option." In fact, Democrats are not considering "changing the rules" -- reconciliation is already part of Senate procedure and Republicans have used it repeatedly in the past, while the term "nuclear option" was coined by then-Republican Sen. Trent Lott in 2005 to refer to a possible Republican attempt to change Senate filibuster rules.



http://mediamatters.org/research/200908220004


"Nuclear option" was coined to describe the process to change Senate filibuster rules

Lott described proposal to change filibuster rules as nuclear option. The term "nuclear option" was coined by Lott, one of the leading advocates of a proposal to change the Senate rule that requires a three-fifths supermajority to invoke cloture and end a filibuster. After Republican strategists deemed the term a political liability, Republican senators began to attribute it to Democrats. As Media Matters for America noted, at the time, many in the news media followed suit, repeating the Republicans' false attribution of the term to the Democrats.


Reconciliation is already part of Senate procedure, and Republicans have used it repeatedly

Reconciliation process is part of Congressional budget process. The budget reconciliation process is defined by the U.S. House Committee on Rules as "part of the congressional budget process ... utilized when Congress issues directives to legislate policy changes in mandatory spending (entitlements) or revenue programs (tax laws) to achieve the goals in spending and revenue contemplated by the budget resolution."



Republicans have repeatedly used reconciliation to pass President Bush's agenda. Republicans used the budget reconciliation process to pass President Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts as well as the 2005 "Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act." The Senate also used the reconciliation procedure to pass a bill containing a provision that would permit oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. (The final version of that bill signed by President Bush did not contain the provision on drilling.)

a machine gun?