Selective enforcement of rules and laws is a staple of corrupt government.
I will leave it at that.
Surely procedural bullshit is common to all governments with legislatures, corrupt or otherwise. Procedural bullshit is a sign of contention and dysfunction, not corruption. Besides, there are so many other reasons to consider congress corrupt then procedural bullshit.
Honestly, the rules committee should probably be maintained by a bunch of judges or something instead of the Congressthralls.
I mean at that point why even have a Congress? If you have to start putting judges on the rules committee, why not just put experts on the other committees? Why not just leave Congress to the business of alternating between rubberstamping and filibustering?
We can't just replace congress with the judiciary, as much as we may want to.
Even ignoring the fact that congress runs on precedent and informal procedure as much as the letter of the law, and that is most definitely not a procedure that is actually followed in practice, this is a confirmation hearing. She's not talking about the guy as a senator, she's talking about him as a potential AG. Their interpretation of the rule isn't defensible at all.
By that logic, any senator who criticized Obama during his presidential bid should have been gagged, since he was a senator back then.
Reading over McConnell's piece arguing that Neil Gorsuch should get an up-down vote, he said that Harry Reid claimed that Obama's nominees were blocked, then triumphantly announced "We did not block either of Barack Obama's
first-term appointments, so he is clearly wrong." (emphasis mine).
The name "Merrick Garland" appeared nowhere in that article.