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With GOP Senators testing positive for covid, "Will the Senate Have a Quorum to Confirm Judge Barrett?"

Asks Jonathan Adler (at Reason):

There are 53 Republican Senators. As of this morning, three Republican Senators (Tillis, Lee, and Johnson) have tested positive. This means there are only 50 Republican Senators who can attend Senate proceedings. (The Vice President does not count for these purposes.) So if Senate Democrats boycott proceedings, they might be able to grind Senate business to a fault....

To a fault? I'm guessing he meant to say "to a halt." Anyway... Adler observes the Judiciary Committee has been allowing members to participate remotely, so it can reach its quorum that way. And someone needs to be present to raise the quorum issue, and that person ? one of the Democrats ? would be the 51st Senator. So there's a quorum without Tillis, Lee, and Johnson. Also, under Article I, section 5, the Senate can ask the sergeant-of-arms to go get missing Senators and drag them to the floor.* Lastly, they could try to authorize remote attendance for the full Senate and include the quarantined Senators that way (but that has its own procedural difficulties, described at the link). Adler also notes that 2 of the covid-positive Senators seem to have caught the disease at the ceremony announcing the Barrett nomination.

That is the literary device known as poetic justice.

Notably, poetic justice does not merely require that vice be punished and virtue rewarded, but also that logic triumph. If, for example, a character is dominated by greed for most of a romance or drama, they cannot become generous. The action of a play, poem, or fiction must obey the rules of logic as well as morality. During the late 17th century, critics pursuing a neo-classical standard would criticize William Shakespeare in favor of Ben Jonson precisely on the grounds that Shakespeare's characters change during the course of the play. When Restoration comedy, in particular, flouted poetic justice by rewarding libertines and punishing dull-witted moralists, there was a backlash in favor of drama, in particular, of more strict moral correspondence.

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*In 1988, Republican Senator Bob Packwood was arrested and carried into the Senate chamber:

As Oregon senator Robert Packwood recalled years later, "They found me through no fault of my own by going into my reception room and asking the cleaning lady if she had seen Senator Packwood. And she said, ?Oh, he's down in his office'." The New York Times reported that the senator thwarted their entry by wedging a heavy chair against one door. He hastily bolted another, but the police had a pass key. Pushing it open, they met minor resistance. "It was their mass against my mass," the apprehended senator noted.

At 1:17 a.m. the police and the senator approached the Chamber's entrance. By prearrangement, Senator Packwood collapsed into the arms of the officers who then transported him feet-first into the Chamber. On his feet again, he announced, "I did not come fully voluntarily."

Is that the kind of theater Republicans want roiling the brains of the people in the run-up to the election?

Full post as published by Althouse on October 03, 2020 (boomark / email).