Senator McConnell

Mitch McConnell is effectively out of the action. The only evidence he is still alive available to the public seems to be a "proof of life" photo arranged for just that purpose, and that seems something that could easily be faked with a little ingenuity.

I understand that there is a key deadline coming up: August 3. If McConnell is found incapable of performing his duties as Senator before that date, a special; election would be called. But if McConnell is still Senator on August 3 and departs for incapacity thereafter, there would be no special election and the seat would simply remain vacant until January.

McConnell is not running for re-election. The Republicans of Kentucky nominated Andy Barr to replace him in a May primary and Barr has the advantage over Democratic contender Charels Booker.

I suspect we will know more by then. The Republicans generally would expect to be able to keep the seat were any special election held -- maybe just get Barr into office a little earlier than he had planned. But if nothing happens, and McConnell continues his absenteeism re debates and votes, the Republicans may have effectively lost control of the chamber even on votes where only a bare majority is necessary.

Comments

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere. At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak...

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a maj...

A Quote from Parfit

Recently I wrote a little about ethicist Derek Parfit. I've been doing further research on him since, and will now describe his Big Picture as I've come to understand it. Parfit believes that the western world only started taking ethical philosophy seriously (as a domain separate from theology) around the time Nietzsche declared that God was dead. There are only three possibilities, in terms of the God/morality issue: 1) You believe that God exists and that His commands define morality 2) You deny that God exists and, like Nietzsche, infer from this that in the absence of commands there is no right or wrong, or 3) You deny that God exists yet persist in believing and attempting to discern right and wrong. From a certain point of view there could be a fourth category, for people who believe that God exists but that His existence is irrelevant to morality, He doesn't issue commands at all, etc. Still, from DP's perspective that sort of God ...

Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Search This Blog