The Daily Parker

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Wendy Davis is my favorite politician today

You call that a filibuster? That's not a filibuster. This is a filibuster:

With tensions running high on both sides, state Sen. Wendy Davis [mounted] a dramatic filibuster Tuesday...to block passage of a controversial and politically charged anti-abortion bill.

Because the special legislative session [ended] at midnight, the Fort Worth Democrat [succeeded by] talking on Senate Bill 5 — a move that [blocked] a mandate by top state Republican leaders to pass the measure during the special legislative session.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst (R) returned to the Senate floor at 3:01 a.m., banged the gavel and announced that, “regrettably, the constitutional time expired” on the special session. Senate Bill 5 cannot be signed because it passed after midnight, he said.

Davis spoke for almost 13 hours, without taking a break or sitting down, before being ruled out of order around 10pm. When the state senate finally tried to vote at 11:45,

[f]or the next 15 minutes — far longer, actually — spectators in the gallery overlooking the Senate floor unleashed a tremendous and sustained scream that drowned out every effort to establish order.

Earlier in the day, Republicans had jammed through the most restrictive voter suppression law in the country only two hours after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 along party lines gutting the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Still, faced with the most extreme right-wing legislative agenda the country has seen in more than a century, one politician literally stood up and said, "not today." I'm impressed.

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