The flight path of the Akaka bill now in the Senate has an eerie resemblance to what happened in previous years. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (George Santayana). Will the Akaka bill pass or fail? In either case, will the end come with a bang or a whimper? Let’s review the whimper of Senate stealth maneuvers in 2000 and 2001, and the bang of the cloture motion on the Senate floor in 2006, to compare them with what’s been happening during the past year and what’s plausible for the upcoming period of September through December, 2010.
If we work hard and are lucky the bill will either die lonely, and quietly forgotten, as happened in 2000; or will crash and burn spectacularly as happened in 2006. But this will be the period of greatest danger in ten years …
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