Shake Your Booty

The filibuster is an effort to talk something to death.

— Sen. Dick Durbin

The filibuster is a Senate procedure invoked by the minority party to "pirate" a popular bill.

This act of piracy used to be difficult, but no longer. 

Until 1975, senators could block a bill only through the “talking filibuster.” Today, they can call for a "virtual" one. No one need talk. 

Joe Biden wants Senators to filibuster like they did "in the old days," talking until they're exhausted. Republicans disagree.

Hard or easy, piracy lies at the very heart of the filibuster.

Filibuster derives from flibustier, the 17th century French word for "pirate." A 1684 memoir by buccaneer John Oexmelin popularized the word in America.

By the 1850s—when Manifest Destiny was on everyone's mind—militia leaders like William Walker were called filibusters. (If there's something strange in your neighborhood who you gonna call?) To filibuster meant to wage a private war; a filibuster was an insurrectionist.

Three decades later, the filibuster was formally introduced in the Senate. Southern obstructionists would use it to "pirate" debates over civil rights bills, spurring ruthless, minority-led "insurrections."

Filibuster is closely related to freebooter, derived from the 16th century Dutch vrijbuiter, meaning "plunderer." Vrijbuit meant "free booty." Booty derived from the 14th century French butin, meaning "plunder taken from an enemy in war." And boot derived from the 11th century German busse, meaning "penance."

Today we call pirates "freebooters."