Commonwealth Club Archives - Author JD Lasica

Yesterday I headed into San Francisco and saw Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., speak to a packed gallery of 350 or so people at the Commonwealth Club of California (I’m a member). She’s in a hotly contested reelection campaign against Carly Fiorina.

As is the case with popular speakers, audience members had to write their questions on a slip of paper and the moderator has to choose which ones to ask. The second question asked was the one I posed: Given the unprecedented use of the filibuster by the Republicans in the current Senate session, what is your position on reforming or eliminating the filibuster?

Here’s the video I took of Sen. Boxer’s two-minute answer. She said she supports reforming the filibuster rules when the next Senate assembles to set its rules in two ways: requiring 55 votes instead of 60, and requiring senators to actually filibuster on their feet. [Read more…] about Sen. Boxer on reforming the filibuster

Apumped-up David Boies said last night that it’s a “dead certainty” that the U.S. Supreme Court will take up the issue of same-sex marriage if a federal appeals court sustains the trial court’s landmark decision Wednesday overturning California’s Proposition 8.

In an hourlong appearance before a capacity crowd of 300 at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club, Boies — who led the plaintiffs’ legal team alongside Ted Olsen — declined to handicap the case’s chances before the conservative High Court. But he said his legal team was “not taking any justice for granted and not giving up” on any of the nine justices.

Boies predicted the often liberal 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals would rule on the case later this year and the Supreme Court would follow in 2011.

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