No more in steam. Thanks so much for joining us. It's been a while since not that long

a time since you were on the intelligence-weared stage just before the pandemic hit. So it's

great to have you back virtually this time, of course.

It's good to be back virtually not as good as in person, but it'll do.

So what I wanted to ask you to do is to help folks understand this concept of the filibuster,

this odd sounding term. I want to talk about where it comes from, but for you to help make the case

that it's worth doing the little bit of work to understand what it means, because though it

frankly revolves around something as dry as a parliamentary maneuver, it really does matter,

doesn't it? Oh, it matters enormously. It enables a minority of the Senate, 40 of the 100 senators,

basically, to be able to block action on almost everything that a president might want or that

a Congress can do. And if you have a determined minority that forces the majority, in this case,

to have to come up with 60 votes, and they can't do it, they don't have enough of their own

party members. If they can't get a single member from the other party to join in, it means

genuine gridlock. So it really is about power. And I want to talk a little bit about what it's not,

because I think if most people have a sense of what the filibuster is, it comes from popular

culture, and it comes from one movie, Frank Capers, 1939 classic film, Mr. Smith goes to Washington.

I'm sure this is the one that you're always asked about also. And Jimmy Stewart is this character

who has been thrust from obscurity into the position of senator. He's a clean honest,

kind of literally boy scout sort of guy who discovers corruption in the system. And one day he's on

the Senate floor, and he's trying to talk about this. And what happens is all the rest of the

senators walk off the floor, they're insulted. And so he finally gets up, and he makes a little

speech that sounds like this. So there's this huge hub hub happening in the Senate at this point.

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