Our Dysfunctional Senate

Covering all the problems with our current political mechanisms – or even the Senate alone – would require a longer post, but George Packer's article "The Empty Chamber" gives some useful history and a good overview of how dysfunctional the U.S. Senate currently is. A 2008 post by Norm Ornstein provides this handy chart, which helps show how unprecedented the current obstructionism is:Jon Perr