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Back in 2005 Democrats filibustered ten of George Bush’s judicial nominees, ending with the famous “Gang of 14” compromise.1 Apparently Republicans have decided to get their revenge by filibustering every Barack Obama nominee, even ones that Republicans themselves unanimously approve of. Steve Benen has the capsule summary of Barbara Milano Keenan’s meandering journey to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.

So what’s the strategy here? Take your pick: (a) It’s just to piss off Democrats. (b) It’s got nothing to do with judges, it’s just to slow down the Senate so that it has less time for other business. (c) It’s habit. (d) All of the above. Me? I guess I’ll go with (d).

1By the way, whether or not the Democratic filibusters were defensible, they had pretty good reason for them. Everybody seems to have forgotten about this history, though, so here’s the background.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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