Harry Reid, in defending the filibuster, says that it is to "protect unlimited debate." Sounds good, but if you actually know what's going on, you realize he's lying and hoping that the average American won't catch him on it. The fact is, filibusters having nothing to do with debate. It used to, but after the filibuster became the favorite tool of politicians trying to obstruct the Senate from actually voting on something, the two tier system was begun. I think I described it in a previous post, but here it is again, in short. There are no longer real filibusters (I suppose there could be, they just aren't used). Instead, when a bill is up a Senator will just tell whomever that he plans to filibuster. They will move on to other business instead of the bill at hand, and behind the scenes the Senators will work to clear up any problems so that when they bring up the original business again, the objecting Senator will hopefully have changed his mind. There's no real debate involed in a filibuster at all, so what Senator Reid said was basically a stone cold lie meant to mislead Americans. Shame on him.