Number 3

Congress was meant to be a deliberative body by our Founding Fathers. That included the ability of the minor party to credibly hold a political posture or position without getting crushed by the majority party of that particular moment in time.

If Bill Frist and the Republicans want to dismantle that precept then they're paving the way for one-party tyranny and democracy as we know will be a thing of the past.

Both parties have used the fillibuster over our nation's history and it has served our country well by preserving at least the semblance of a two-party democracy. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely [Lord Acton]. A dominant Republican party today - without the constraints of the power to fillibuster - will simply bring this truism to life.

No on tyranny by the majority. After all, that's why we have the Bill of Rights in the first place. If Bill First & Company do away with the fillibuster, what's to stop them from ultimately doing away with the Bill of Rights? They could chip away and begin to dismantle many of the tenets of our Republic and after a while we would find that what our Founding Fathers fought so hard to create and preserve has been completely obliterated by extremist ideologues hell-bent on imposing their views on the rest of us.

We must resist this with all of our might or we will - in Lincoln's words - "perish from the face of the earth."

From Pete Newcome (transferred from email)