“The Empty Chamber: Just How Broken Is the Senate?”, 2010-08-02 ():
[Profile of the US federal Senate.
What has gone wrong with the Senate, which has descended into stasis, legal pettifogging, legislative tactics, pointless procedures, and a total loss of collegiality and bipartisan links?
Senators spend as much time fundraising as legislating, bills are ghostwritten, committees chair empty meetings, and measures to increase transparency and public accountability appear to have done nothing, or rather, outright backfired, eliminating the Senate’s role as a body of statesmen detached from immediate political passions.
Some trace it back to the Republican wave of the 1970s, eliminating many of the experienced senators and bringing in small-government ideologues, and to the simultaneous creation of C-SPAN to broadcast Senatorial proceedings to the watching public.
The problem with the Senate and American democracy may be too little Senate and too much democracy.]