SHOCK! Fox immediately lies about Senate rules reform #p2

from http://www.congressmatters.com/storyonly/2011/1/6/101316/2856

To no one's surprise, Fox News comes right out of the gate lying about Senate rules reform efforts. Check out this headline:

A Dem Win on Filibuster Rules Could Mean Defeat on Eliminating Secret Holds

Now, I could quote you the entire article right here, but it wouldn't do you any good if you were trying to find actual support in it for that headline. Nowhere -- and I mean nowhere -- in the piece does anyone actually say why a Dem win on filibuster rules could mean defeat on eliminating secret holds.

And the reason it doesn't say that anywhere is that the claim is both made up and as far from true as can possibly be.

Holds, secret or otherwise, get their power entirely from the threat of the filibuster:

[

H]olds are essentially just placeholders for a threat to filibuster. Instead of actually filibustering a motion to proceed to start debate on some measure and wasting everybody's time, you politely inform your colleagues that if they were to try to bring that measure up by unanimous consent, you'd object, and if they were to try to get a vote on it, you'd filibuster. Then, everybody decides whether it's important enough to them to waste a few days going through the cloture process. If yes, that's exactly what they do. In no, then the measure is "held," or politely put aside for some later date.

That's all the hold is. So as long as Senators have the power to threaten to waste everyone's time for several days at a stretch -- that is, the power to filibuster -- then the hold remains a viable tool, whether it's secret or not.

So yeah, the Fox headline is just a straight-up lie, designed to give a drive-by impression of the exact opposite of the truth.

That's about how I expect most hyperpartisan Republican reaction to go. They'll insist that the Udall/Harkin/Merkley proposal will somehow both entirely "outlaw" filibuster (which it very pointedly does not), further restrict the minority's right to offer amendments (which it actually goes more than out of its way to guarantee), and that it makes the problem of secret holds worse (even though it actually eliminates even their possibility).

Par for the course at Fox. And yet another slap in the face of informed Americans.