...Because Nobody Else Is Explaining This To You

It's the day after the U.S. Senate had an overnight session to deliberate over the Levin-Reed amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill that would require U.S. armed forces to withdraw from Iraq by April 2008. The session ended when the vote for cloture failed to achieve the required sixty vote super-majority.

Here are some things you might not understand about what happened if you've been relying on the U.S. television, radio and print news media to explain it to you:

p1. Fifty-one votes are enough to pass the amendment and bring the troops home from Iraq.
p2. There are at least fifty-one Democratic (and some Republican) senators publicly committed to voting for the amendment.
p3. The GOP minority can obstruct the bill in a procedure called a "filibuster."
p4. A filibuster is when the minority refuses to stop debating with the majority over the merits of a question.
p5. Filibusters succeed when the majority gives up and drops the question, i.e. by killing the bill/amendment in question.
p6. Filibusters like this one can only fail under current Senate rules when sixty senators vote for "cloture" on the debate.
p7. Normally, filibusters in the Senate don't result in overnight debating sessions.
p7(a). This time, Democrats insisted that GOP members explain in public why continued debate should be necessary.
p8. When the GOP complains that Democrats are engaging in a publicity stunt, remember that the GOP is the party that insists on continuing the debate.
p9. The Democrats have not dropped the Levin-Reed amendment, therefore the filibuster has not yet succeeded.

Please try to keep these things in mind when your media meatpuppets try to tell you that 1) the Senate voted 52-47 against withdrawing troops from Iraq, 2) the Democrats are mounting a filibuster, and 3) the GOP has succeeded in stopping the filibuster. It's all the worst kind of lying.

p.s. It's Not Too Late To STOP THE WAR AGAINST IRAN.