A Million Stories

Evan M. Lopez

Dept. of Interesting Ideas

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far, away —Florida, 2006 — we met Alan, a tall, imposing, uncouth, budding politician with an almost menacing goatee. He was a rich trial lawyer with a hint of '60s radical, the kind of guy who lived in a pink-painted mansion and named his kids things like Skye and Stone. Alan was smarter than you — three Harvard degrees! — and insufferably aware of it. But, he was an outspoken fighter who generally sided with the angels on important issues like the Iraq war, so we cut him some slack.

And lookie here! Today, Alan is the clean-shaven U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Florida, darling of the netroots. He's the freshman rep who said the Republican health-care plan was for you to "die quickly," and called one of Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke's aides a " K Street whore." But beneath all the bombast and narcissistic need for attention lies a brain percolating with ideas. Like this: stopsenatestalling.com.

That's Grayson's new Web site, an effort to get you to pressure Democratic leaders in the U.S. Senate to change the way they do business, and, consequently, to make progressive reforms more doable. Oh, sure, it'll probably never happen, but when has that ever stopped us from rallying behind a lost cause?

If you've been paying any modicum of attention, you know that the Democrats' health-care plans have hit a roadblock in The World's Greatest Deliberative Body. To get anything through the Senate, they need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, and this gives inordinate power to self-righteous tools like Joe Lieberman. But before 1970, filibusters were rare. Even earlier this decade, when Democrats filibustered some of President Bush's judicial nominees and Republicans made noise about invoking the "nuclear option" — eliminating the filibuster — the Dems allowed the Republican Senate to move ahead with controversial bills, like Bush's 2003 energy law, which was basically a hand job for Exxon. Yet, in the first two years after the Dems took over the Senate in 2007, the Republicans filibustered 112 times — nearly double the record of any previous Congress. Grayson wants Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to rewrite the filibuster rules: Instead of requiring 60 votes to invoke cloture, Grayson thinks the new standard should be 55. This sort of thing has happened before; before 1975, the Senate required 67 votes for cloture. Such a move would assuredly grease the legislative wheel, and not just for health care. We wondered what our three senatorial candidates — Democrats Arlen Specter and Joe Sestak and Republican Pat Toomey — thought about it. And we got answers, sorta.

Sestak says he doesn't want to dismember the filibuster, though he wouldn't mind if the Senate passed health-care reform through reconciliation, a parliamentary maneuver that bypasses the filibuster. Toomey wants to keep the filibuster safe and strong. Of course, we don't recall Toomey objecting when Republicans controlled everything, but whatever. And then there's Specter, who as a Republican in 2005 did his best to fence-straddle on the nuclear option. He demanded up-and-down votes for Bush's judicial nominees, but said eliminating the filibuster would plunge the Senate into "turmoil." Still, as Manuel Miranda, a former aid to then-Majority Leader Bill Frist, wrote in the Wall Street Journal in 2005: " Mr. Specter stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Mr. Frist as he started the controversial anti-filibuster debate."

Today, Specter says ... nothing . He didn't call us back.

Cops behaving badly

On Sunday, Nov. 29, a man was arrested for allegedly urinating in the vicinity of Ninth Street and Passyunk Avenue, and, at some point, taking a swing at an officer. He was apprehended by a veritable legion of cops and led off to the paddy wagon. From our vantage point around the corner, all we heard was a loud SLAM! from the back of the van. A guy who had a clearer view than we did thought something was amiss. He whipped out his iPhone and started filming. And then, as we watched, he got arrested for this very serious offense — filming cops possibly abusing people.

Four police officers approached him, and threatened to smash his phone. Our videographer, a thin man with an olive complexion, short black hair and a black wool coat, promised to delete the video — which, not for nothing, he had every legal right to shoot. "God damn right you'll erase it," one cop told him. And then the cops handcuffed him and dragged him off to a nearby patrol car, anyway, because why the hell not. We asked the nearest uniform what the man was charged with. "Assault on a police officer."

"But he didn't assault anyone."

"Listen, that's all I've got to say. Now I suggest you get out of here, unless you want to join him."

"Excuse me?"

"Did I stutter?"

What are we, 13?

Later, we called the department's public affairs office to find out this dude's name; they said they didn't have the incident on record, so they couldn't get it to us. If you know who he is, we'd love to hear from you. E-mail us at amillionstories@citypaper.net.