Please sponsor my 5k swim coming up in April and help support Marie Curie Cancer Care, an organisation which provides home nursing care to people with terminal illnesses.

There’s a lot to be said about the recently passed stimulus bill (for starters, it’s worth asking exactly what this effort, along with others aimed at economic recovery, are intended to save), but the way the Senate voted to approve it is worth examining too. Yes, it reveals the drawing of a partisan line and the likelihood that the Republican leadership is going to do everything it can to get in the way of the Democratic agenda, but it showed something else as well: how absolutely out of date our Congressional procedures are.

Is there any good reason why Senator Kennedy couldn’t vote from Florida? Why should Senator Brown have had to fly back from his mother’s memorial service? In our wired age, there is no good reason to require Senators to be physically present on the floor to cast votes. Granted, there would be a possibility of hackers interfering with any voting system that relied on the Internet, but attempts to alter the results would be easy to detect since these votes are not anonymous.

If the Senate can allow filibusters that aren’t really filibusters then surely they can allow votes to be cast by people not physically present in the Capitol.

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1. Why I Can’t Vote for Senator Clinton
2. Demonstrations & Elections
3. Can we impeach yet?
4. But, really, who cares about reproductive rights?
5. Anyone in Iowa Want to Give Me a Birthday Present?
6. “Hope” is not a platform.
7. Celebrating the Fourth of July?
8. Quick Hits
9. Diamonds or Pearls? How About Neither?
10. On the Assassination of Benazir Bhutto

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