WASHINGTON -- History was rhyming like a motherfcker Thursday morning. In the Senate, Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, was arguing for a unanimous consent motion that would bring a bill requiring stringent background checks on gun purchases out of Mitch McConnell’s Mausoleum Of Stuff He Hates and onto the Senate floor for a vote. As Murphy was speaking, and I mean literally while he was talking, the news broke of yet another school shooting, this one in California.

WE CAN'T GO 24 HOURS WITHOUT NEWS OF ANOTHER MASS SHOOTING SOMEWHERE IN AMERICA. MY KIDS AND MILLIONS OF OTHERS HIDE IN CORNERS OF THEIR CLASSROOM OR IN THEIR BATHROOMS PREPARING FOR A MASS SHOOTING AT THEIR SCHOOL, AND THIS BODY DOES NOTHING ABOUT IT.



That was on CSPAN. On CNN, they were talking about how the Santa Clarita police department was scrambling toward Saugus High School. Murphy made his motion full in the knowledge that it was futile. It only takes one senator to object to kill a unanimous consent motion and Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, an unremarkable legislator last seen doing some Confederate soldier cosplay, was more than willing and able to say no.

IF THIS SO-CALLED COMMONSENSE BIPARTISAN LEGISLATION WAS INDEED CRAFTED WITH STRONG BIPARTISAN INPUT, IT SHOULDN'T HAVE ANY PROBLEMS ADVANCING BY REGULAR ORDER. MANY QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS LEGISLATION NEED TO BE ANSWERED BEFORE IT'S FORCED UPON LAW-ABIDING GUN OWNERS. IF I WANTED TO GIVE MY BEST FRIEND'S SON OR GRANDSON MY HUNTING RIFLE, WOULD WE FIRST HAVE TO APPEAR BEFORE A LICENSED GUN DEALER AND GO THROUGH A LENGTHY AND POTENTIALLY EXPENSIVE BACKGROUND CHECK?



Heaven forfend.



MY CONSTITUENTS WOULD LIKE TO HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY TO WEIGH IN ON OUR MEASURES LIKE THESE, WHICH IS WHY WE CAN'T FAST TRACK LEGISLATION THAT AFFECTS AMERICA'S SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHTS. I OBJECT TO THIS UNANIMOUS CONSENT REQUEST, MR. PRESIDENT, AND I YIELD THE FLOOR.



And the Santa Clarita P.D. finally made it to Saugus High School.



Mississippi Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, left, and President Donald Trump greet each other during a "Keep America Great" campaign rally at BancorpSouth Arena on November 1, 2019. Brandon Dill Getty Images

The United States Senate plainly sucks. Of course, the original constitutional design demands that each of the three branches of government suck in their own ways, but always in balance with the amount that the other two suck, so as to keep any of them from capsizing the power balance in the government. But the Senate under Mitch McConnell has been fashioned into a vehicle that sucks to such an amazing degree that it has thrown everything out of whack. The Senate now simultaneously is a servant of the Executive and the master of the House of Representatives. It allows the former to do anything it wants and it refuses to recognize the legitimacy of anything the latter does. The Senate sucks so generally in both directions that it has become the source of the paralysis that the general public attributes to Government in general. But, make no mistake about it. The United States Senate sucks.

“We never have had a situation like this before,” Murphy said later, after Hyde-Smith had doomed his attempt to bring the background check bill to the floor. “We’ve never had a situation where a bill favored by 90 percent of the American people can’t even come up for a vote in the Senate.”

Nobody better exemplifies the thoroughgoing suckitude of the Senate than does Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. No senator has sold as much of his soul to the White House in so public a fashion, and no senator has been so openly contemptuous of the House, particularly as regards the impeachment of the president*. Graham was at it again on Thursday.

I am really over with this. This whole thing is a joke. I am not persuaded by the quid pro quo argument. Nothing happened here. We’re not going to impeach this president over this. We’re not going to legitimize a hearing where you can only call Democratic witnesses. We’re legitimizing a process that I think is a danger to the presidency itself.

As to Graham’s good-soldier bona fides with El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago, they were strengthened by his obeisance to the president*’s good pal, Recep Erdogan, the president of Turkey who currently is demolishing our alleged Kurdish allies in what’s left of northern Iraq. At what has been described as a truly bizarre meeting at the White House at which Erdogan showed the president* and several senators—including Graham—a video that depicted our alleged Kurdish allies as terrorists. According to a report from Axios, Graham got in Erdogan’s face about showing the video, and about what Turkey is doing in Iraq. However, later on Wednesday, Graham blocked a resolution that formally would have recognized as a genocide the mass murder of Armenians by Turkey in the early 1900s. Graham was the one vote, the way that Cindy Hyde-Smith was the one vote that blocked consideration of the background check bill, because the United Senate is sucking even more than it was designed to suck. Still later on Thursday, the Senate managed to vote on the nomination of Stephen Menashe to a lifetime appointment on the federal bench despite the fact that Menashe is no more qualified to sit there than I am qualified to sit in the cockpit of an F-16, and despite the fact that he is, by a startling bipartisan consensus, a rather colossal dick besides.

Background checks couldn’t get a vote.

Armenian genocide couldn’t get a vote.

Stephen Menashe got a vote.

Stephen Menashe got confirmed.

The U.S. Senate sucks.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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