{"id":2961,"date":"2010-01-19T23:54:05","date_gmt":"2010-01-20T04:54:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kevinbryant.com\/?p=2961"},"modified":"2010-01-19T23:54:05","modified_gmt":"2010-01-20T04:54:05","slug":"if-its-good-enough-for-1962-then-why-not-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/if-its-good-enough-for-1962-then-why-not-now\/","title":{"rendered":"if it’s good enough for 1962, then why not now?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In preparation for what they expect to be Republican Scott Brown’s victory in the Massachusetts Senate special election tonight, conservatives and Republicans have unearthed\u00a0a novel and ironic precedent<\/a>, which they’re using to argue that, if he wins, Brown should be seated right away as the 41st vote against health care reform.<\/p>\n

Senate rules require<\/a> that all newly-elected Senators be certified as winners by their home states before they can be sworn in. But on November 6, 1962, none other than Ted Kennedy himself won a special election to fill his own brother’s Senate seat in Massachusetts, and was sworn in the very next day–two full weeks before his victory was certified, and three weeks before that certification arrived in Washington.<\/p>\n

1962 is a long way back, and according to Senate historian Don Ritchie, the relevant rule has been in place since well before then.<\/p>\n

“Senators have always had to be certified to be sworn in,” he says.<\/p>\n

So why the exception for Kennedy? The short answer is the Senate disregarded its own rules and seated him despite lacking certification (the state certificate arrived a few weeks later<\/a>). The longer answer is that there are some important differences between Kennedy’s election 47 years ago and this year’s race in Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

Most crucially, according to Ritchie, the Senate was not in session in November, 1962, which means nobody was around to object to seating him immediately–the rules were waived and Kennedy was sworn in without certification. “Kennedy was sworn in the next day,” Ritchie emails. “He won by a commanding majority, and the Senate was not in session, so there was no challenge, even though the paperwork for his certification came later.”<\/p>\n

read the full article<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In preparation for what they expect to be Republican Scott Brown’s victory in the Massachusetts Senate special election tonight, conservatives and Republicans have unearthed\u00a0a novel and ironic precedent, which they’re using to argue that, if he wins, Brown should be seated right away as the 41st vote against health care reform. Senate rules require that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2961","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2gEQ0-LL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2961\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}