Once upon a time, we lived in a world in which it was understood that the majority ruled.  Ah, those were the days.  Now, lest some liberal snowflake take offense, I’m not advocating a tyranny of the majority.  You see, we have this Constitution and Bill of Rights.  These are the documents that you highly evolved Progressives alternately ignore, revile and attempt to change on the latest left-wing whim.  These documents provide the necessary protections for racial and ethnic minorities, and the like.  I’m not talking about them.  I’m talking about our elected representatives in the Congress, more specifically, the Senate.  There are 100 Senators, and logically one would assume that, to pass legislation or a nomination, 51 votes would suffice.  One could argue that this was what the Founders intended.  The Constitution empowers the Vice President to break ties in the Senate when the vote is evenly divided, and it clearly spells out when a super-majority vote is required:   (1) overriding presidential vetoes;  (2) removing Federal officers through impeachment proceedings with conviction by two-thirds vote of the Senate;  (3) ratifying treaties by two-thirds vote of the Senate;  (4) expelling members from the House or Senate; and  (5) proposing constitutional amendments.  It follows, therefore, that, for any other vote, a simple majority should suffice, but sadly, this is not the case.  The Senate has a rule which authorizes the filibuster (endless debate) of any issue, and which requires 60 votes (cloture) to end and move to a vote on the issue.  “Filibuster.”  It’s a funny word, derived from the Spanish filibustero, itself deriving from the Dutch vrijbuiter, “privateer, pirate, robber,” from whence the English word, “freebooter.”  So, one who filibusters is akin to a pirate, who steals the vote of the majority.  The practice came into use in the U.S Senate in the early 19th Century.  It’s been used by both Parties, but most notably by Senate Democrats, who used filibusters to prevent any meaningful civil rights legislation from being enacted for about 100 years.  The filibuster wasn’t invented in the Senate.  Such dilatory tactics were employed in ancient Rome, most notably by Cato the Younger, who filibustered to frustrate the policies of Julius Caesar.  And now, in 2017, comes Chuck Schumer, who has vowed to filibuster the nomination of Neil Gorsuch as a Justice of the Supreme Court.  You see, Gorsuch has sworn to decide cases based on the facts and the law.  In other words, he would act like a judge, and that’s the last thing Schumer and his band of pirates want.  Republicans have 52 votes in the Senate.  In a sane world, that would be enough, but our world is far from sane, and in addition to halting Senate action on much needed legislation, the Democrats now seek to stop all Senate action of which they, the minority Party, do not approve.  Thus, the time has come to end the filibuster, as the rule is but a vestige of a Senate which no longer exists.  Democrats should have no problem with this, after all, they claim the Constitution itself is “a living document,” subject to alteration by five judges, and we’re only talking about Senate Rule XXII.  Senators like to say the Senate policy of delay serves to “cool off” hot notions cooked up in the House.  Thus, they justify the obstructionist tactics used by Cato more than 2,000 years ago.  Now, while I hesitate to equate Donald Trump with Julius Caesar, there are some in the Senate would would like to knife him.  On the other hand, Chuck Schumer certainly is no Cato, but the Senate logjam must be broken.  It is the arcane Senate Rules that resulted in the debacle that was the failed Ryan healthcare bill.  The filibuster should go the way of the Romans.  When the rule was enacted, the Senate was elected by the State Legislatures, thus Senators represented the State from which they came, giving the States a seat at the table on federal matters, just as the Founders intended.  The filibuster kept the populous States from ignoring the interests of the small States.  The 17th Amendment changed all that, providing for popular election of Senators.  Logically, if Senators are elected by the same voters as are House members, and if a simple majority decides all House votes, other than those singled out for super-majority by the Constitution, then the purpose of the filibuster no longer exists.  For that matter, but for the 17th Amendment, today’s Senate would include of about 67 Republicans, so what purpose does the filibuster serve?  Well, in 2001, the New York Times called the filibuster nothing more than a tactic for sore losers.  In  2009, Democrat Senator Sheldon Whitehouse decried Republican filibusters as acts of obstruction.  In 2010, Democrat Senator Al Franken  attacked the use of filibusters by Republicans as a “perversion of the filibuster.”  In 2012, Democrat Elizabeth Warren said the rules should be changed to limit filibusters.  All three, still in office, must have changed their minds.  And Democrats have never been reluctant to change the filibuster rule whenever it served their purposes.  In 1917, they created the cloture system, requiring a 2/3 vote to end a filibuster.  In the 1960’s, to help them to deny civil rights to all citizens, Democrats changed the rule to allow the Senate to move on to other issues during a filibuster.  In 1975, Democrats changed cloture from 67 to 60 votes.  In 2013, to get extremist Obama nominees on the Courts, they abolished the filibuster for all but Supreme Court nominations.  But now, we have a Republican President and a Republican Congress.  The New York Times has had second thoughts.  On the eve of the Trump inauguration, they wrote, “It’s important to keep the filibuster.  With it, presidents must try to win the minority’s support for nominees.  This has helped to keep nominations in the judicial mainstream.” To define terms, to a Democrat, “the judicial mainstream” means appointing judges who will ignore statutes and the Constitution and simply rubber stamp the leftist agenda.  Justices Sotomayor and Kagan fit that mold.  Republicans didn’t block them, but Cato the Schumer, and his band of pirates will not reciprocate.  Gorsuch is not a wild-eyed leftist rubber stamp, therefore he is not acceptable.  As President of the Senate, Vice-President Pence, as presiding officer, could, on motion, declare a Senate rule unconstitutional, and that decision could be upheld by a simple majority vote.  It must be done.  To paraphrase Cato the Younger’s grandfather, Cato the Elder, “Cato the Schumer must be destroyed.”  (Look it up).  When the majority rules, sanity will again reign in America.  When he was defeated by Caesar, Cato the Younger did the right thing.  He killed himself.  We should have such luck.