Tim Murphy

Reporter

Tim Murphy is a reporter in MoJo's DC bureau. Last summer he logged 22,000 miles while blogging about his cross-country road trip for Mother Jones. His writing has been featured in Slate and the Washington Monthly. Email him with tips and insights at tmurphy [at] motherjones [dot] com.

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How the Filibuster Redraws the Map

—By Tim Murphy

| Wed Apr. 28, 2010 11:15 AM PDT

Last week I spoke with Greg Koger, author of a new book on the history of the filibuster. You'll never guess what we talked about. The interview is up here and it's worth a look, but there was one bit of our conversation that didn't make it into the final product, which I think is still worth noting.

Koger pointed out that one unintended consequence of filibuster reform would be that the Senate would start to act more like the House. As he puts it, "that's not necessarily a good thing." Since it sounded like an argument against majority rule, I asked him (in so many words) why he hates democracy. Here's what he said:

It's not clear what majority rule means in the context of the Senate. The Senate's one of the most malapportioned legislatures anywhere! On the one hand you can tell the story where a bare majority of the Senate represents a very small proportion of the American population. And then the counterargument is that 41 Senators representing an even smaller portion of the population can block legislation. Either way, the main point is that the Senate is a very malapportioned body...so the ability to muster a majority doesn’t necessarily mean that the national interest is being served.

This is a pretty important point and one that gets overlooked a lot when talking about something like the filibuster. But I think it lets the chamber off a little easy: One of the reasons the Senate is so malapportioned in the first place is because the admission of largely unpopulated states to the Union was determined by...the United States Senate. It's kind of a self-fulfilling failure.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

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Senators Behaving Badly

Political scientist Greg Koger talks health care reform, filibuster history, and the problem with Schoolhouse Rock.

—By Tim Murphy

| Wed Apr. 28, 2010 1:00 AM PDT

Yesterday, for the second time in as many days, Senate Republicans—and one Democrat—voted, 41-57, against invoking cloture on financial reform legislation, thereby blocking efforts to bring the bill to the floor for an up-or-down vote. In other words, they filibustered. Again.

While the latest Senate filibuster is unlikely to last, in recent years the world's greatest deliberative body has done a lot more deliberating than usual: 60-vote supermajorities have become standard operating procedure, and even some of the least controversial of President Obama's nominees have seen their confirmations stall for months at the threat of a filibuster. With politically charged climate and immigration legislation on the horizon, such obstruction isn't likely to go away anytime soon.

So who's at fault? According to University of Miami political scientist Greg Koger, we have fact-finding trips and golf courses to blame—not Mitch McConnell. Mother Jones spoke with Koger last week about today's Senate, how to fix it, and his forthcoming book: Filibustering: A Political History of Obstruction in the House and Senate, out in June.

Mother Jones: Over the last year and a half, a lot of journalists have used the filibuster to argue that Washington is broken. As James Fallows at The Atlantic put it, "One thing I've never heard in my time overseas is 'I wish we had a Senate like yours.'" Are we seeing a new phenomenon?

Greg Koger: What makes the current Senate distinct is not the rules, it's the way that senators are behaving. On the Republican side, there's an extraordinary willingness to filibuster the type of legislation they would not have filibustered in the past, whether we're talking about stimulus bills or broad-ranging health care reform when everybody knows that the system's broken. And then honestly, I think the Democrats have not done a very good job of playing the legislative side of the political process.

[Read the full article]

John Brown's Jazz Opera

—By Tim Murphy

| Mon Apr. 26, 2010 12:58 PM PDT

Yesterday, because it was within walking distance of my house, and because I have an unhealthy fixation with the Pottawatomie Creek Massacre, I checked out the San Francisco Community Music Center's production of John Brown's Truth, the world's first-ever improvised jazz opera about the 1859 raid on Harper's Ferry. While I don't want to give away the ending, suffice to say, the main character dies in the end. It was a novel concept, and one which I'm hardly qualified to critique the musical merits of, but I will say that the audience seemed to enjoy it, and the little girl with the jump rope—who periodically invited the audience to join her rhymes about Harriet Tubman and Malcolm X—deserves her own solo act.

It was tough to really appreciate John Brown's Truth, though, because it didn't seem particularly concerned with the truth about John Brown. Pottawatomie Creek, where Brown presided as five pro-slavery Kansans were hacked to pieces in 1856, goes unmentioned. I know, I know: Let he among us who hasn't been implicated in a quintuple homicide cast the first stone. Instead our story picks up in 1859, when Brown gets a message from God to become a martyr for the anti-slavery cause, so Brown becomes something of a one-dimensional hero.

But I don't mean to pick on the performance, because 150 years (and change) after his death, no one really knows what to make of Brown.

[Read more in the Riff blog]

McCain's 'Straight Talk Express' Gets a Green Makeover

—By Tim Murphy

| Fri Apr. 23, 2010 4:46 PM PDT

Since finishing in second place for president in 2008, John McCain has gone to great lengths to distance himself from, well, himself. He's ditched his past compassion for immigration reform, and even gone so far as to disavow the nickname "maverick"—his epithet of choice for much of his political career. So it's only fitting, I guess, that McCain's fabled Straight Talk Express campaign bus (shown here, getting the full Cribs treatment) has gone through something of a makeover as well. As Lloyd Grove at the Daily Beast reports, McCain's 2008 wheels are experiencing a second life in an environmental advocacy campaign spearheaded by Alexandra Cousteau, the granddaughter of underwater explorer Jacques:

With the defunct McCain logo now painted over in drab purple, the 45-foot biodiesel tour bus is outfitted with Internet access, state-of-the-art editing suites and other multimedia equipment that will accommodate Cousteau’s international production crew of 15... Cousteau’s journey, starting from the nation’s capital, will take in water spots in the United States and Canada, including the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway, the headwaters of the Colorado River, the Florida Keys, and the Kingston, Tennessee, coal ash sludge spill that, when a dam broke on a containment pool at a coal-fired electricity plant, dumped more than a billion gallons of toxic waste into the surrounding area.

I've always wondered (probably too much) what happens to campaign buses after their candidates crash and burn. I guess now we have our answer. Now if only someone can figure out what happened to the Ron Paul blimp.

Kelsey Grammer Launching Tea Party TV

—By Tim Murphy

| Tue Apr. 20, 2010 11:54 AM PDT

Jon Voight may be more outspoken, but for years Kelsey Grammer has been one of Hollywood's most prominent conservatives. The Frasier star endorsed John McCain in 2008, and has told reporters he may someday run for office himself (he did, after all, play a Republican presidential candidate in the 2008 movie Swing Vote). Now, Grammer has taken his activism to its logical conclusion: This summer, he's backing the launch of The RightNetwork, an on-demand television channel catering to, in his words, "Americans who are looking for content that reflects and reinforces their perspective and world-view." Think of it as Fox News without the news.

The RightNetwork's rollout hasn't been without controversy. A press release from RightNetwork, which suggested that Comcast was a partner in the project, has since been taken down, and the broadcast giant has sternly denied any involvement (although it may still decide to carry the channel).

[Read more in the MoJo blog]