Burnt Orange Report

I don't know. Somehow I think the work of ensuring that Bush & Co. don't have another four years to do their damage may outweigh the need to vote on a cloture vote that had no chance of passing anyway.

Besides, both Kerry and Edwards have made it abundantly clear where they stand on the issue.

As stated on Kos:

"This vote was for cloture, to close off debate and vote on the actual amendment. There are Republicans that voted to shut off debate that indicated they would vote against the amendment in an up-or-down vote. And both real Democrats have indicated they would've voted against the amendment as well."

So save your angry e-mail to Sens. Byrd and Nelson.

I agree. But for symbolic purposes I would have liked to have seen them there. I'm not really angry over it, and I understand, but I am slightly disappointed.

In the slightly altered words of some brain-dead Sportscenter anchor, Byron, "Don't hate the playa, hate the stupid, discriminatory, bigoted, potentially Constitution-altering game played by jackasses like Santorum."

This was procedural. Both candidates said they would have returned for the actual vote on the bill, which would have been the next day.

I want to take a second to defend Senator Byrd. Over his long tenure in the Senate, we have seen this man evolve before our eyes. He's one of my heroes.

A relic of the Old Democratic Party--remember his KKK membership?--he has managed to keep up with the progressive movement in the party. He has said that he would vote against the amendment! Pretty commendable for a man in his 80s, from West Virginia, who was once a member of the Klan! (For Senator Byrd, hating President Bush is far more important that the South's old racist past.)

If you look at the socialist countries that have gone in the direction of destruction of the family, you only need to look at the imposition and heavy weight of government.

What an idiot. How he is unable to see that outlawing a form of free association is exactly what he's supposedly railing against?

This really was inside the Beltway nonsense that made the Republicans look like fools. Give our boy John Cornyn credit - he knows who supports him and who put him in office. He sucked up big-time to the right wing religionists. But it seems clear that most people are tired of this obsession that the GOP and the Christian Right have with homosexual marriage, and are ready to move on to more important issues, like cutting back the number of American men and women coming home from Iraq in boxes.

It's only the lazy Republicans that are totally obsessed with the gay marriage debate. They somehow think that the neighbor around the corner is going to have a direct impact into their daily lives and the raising of their children. It's a shame that they feel that a neighbor, a stranger on the street or a t.v. charactor has a greater influence on THEIR family and their future children's family than they do. Doesn't say much for them as parents.

Maybe the Republicans should send some extra funds to Mass. so they can afford more divorce courts, since as we all know, gay marriage there is proabably destroying heterosexual marriages at an alarming rate!

Remember also that cloture needs 60 votes; abstention is effectively a no vote. Making a simple symbolic gesture on a cloture vote that didn't even get a majority, especially with Kerry one of the brave few who voted against DoMA, is not worth the time.

To the person who said that Sen. Byrd was his hero -- he was one of the prominent cosponsors of the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 and made a truly disgusting speech in defense of it.