US President Barack Obama is supporting a move by Senate Democrats to limit the minority Republicans ability to block the President’s judicial and staff nominations.  It ends a Republican-caused logjam on Mr. Obama’s second term in office.

Soft-spoken former boxer and Senate Majority leader Harry Reid called for the vote to end the “Filibuster”, a tactic made famous in the classic Hollywood film “Mr. Smith Goes To Washington”, which allows opposition senators to stop a given piece of senate business in its tracks. 

Way back when the Jimmy Stewart movie was made, a Senator would have to stand there in the legislative body and talk for as long as humanly possible.  But modern rule changes allowed Senators to stall legislation endlessly merely by filing an objection that required a 60 percent majority for approval.  That gave a small group of lawmakers with nothing even close to a majority of public support the ability to bring government to a halt.  No more. 

But why the Senate Democrats chose to act is even more important than the fact that after years of obstruction they finally did.  The Republicans refused to allow up or down votes on a multitude of Obama’s nominations and appointments, the most serious of which were to the understaffed District of Columbia Federal Court.  That’s the court that deals with most challenges to government programs and policies.  Now, Obama can nominate his choices and get them approved with the Democratic majority, and begin to clear years of backlogs from the US Federal Court System.