March 2, 2005
WASHINGTON DC (APUPI) Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) announced today that, as part of the ongoing modernization of Senate procedures, it will be instituting a new rule of debate, to be known as the Byrd Rule.
“Standards of debate have evolved rapidly in the Internet age, with the plethora of on-line discussion over the past couple decades,” he explained. “On Usenet, there is a seemingly immutable law that any discussion that goes on sufficiently long will eventually introduce some reference or comparison to Adolf Hitler or his political party. Many newsgroups have an unwritten tradition that, at this point, the discussion can be considered to be over, with the person who made the introduction having lost the debate.”
“Accordingly,” he went on, “we are going to make such a rule explicit in the Senate, apply it retroactively to the recent peculiar remarks of the most distinguished and eloquent senior Senator from West Virginia, of whom my esteem is so high as to not be able to find the words to express it, and honor him in perpetuity by naming it after him.”
It’s believed to be the first time that this rule has been applied to a legislative body, though it has long been usefully applied in on-line discussion groups on topics as diverse as geology, meteorology, antique car collecting, and ferret breeding.
Not all were pleased with the new rule. Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) expressed great disappointment at the proposed change, and promised to filibuster against it.
“This is a destruction of the long Senatorial tradition of free expression, and give and take,” he declared, angrily.
“The next thing you know, they’ll be declaring the battle won when an aging and senile Senator rambles on about his little dog Billy. Put simply, it is a blatant attempt by these new Nazis, these little Goebbels, who have taken over our august body, to stifle debate,” he proclaimed.