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Yes, that was awful, but I鈥檓 sorry, it had to be said.

Anyway. Hotlining is the practice of bypassing regular Senate procedures and moving legislation through to a vote with little or no floor debate in an attempt to pass the legislation through the unanimous consent of all Senators. As with most things in Congress, it can be helpful, or it can be abused. On the one hand, members of Congress will occasionally hotline a bill when they鈥檙e under political pressure to move things along, or when they鈥檙e just itching to leave town for recess. (Believe me, there are times when we鈥檙e all itching for them to leave town.) As often as not, hotlined bills are noncontroversial, technical bills, resolutions, the sort of thing that rarely makes the papers.

On the other hand, hotlining can be a useful tool to overcome frivolous objections that are only being raised to stall legislation a member of Congress doesn鈥檛 like for partisan political reasons. Hotlines typically don鈥檛 stand when there鈥檚 a valid point of debate. (I say 鈥渢ypically,鈥� thought it鈥檚 certainly not impossible. You know anything can happen with those crazy kids.) For example, Senators Snowe and Coburn stopped a recent hotline on the by raising some important privacy concerns 鈥� the same concerns we鈥檇 been raising for a while.

And now, if I can do this without dropping it, I鈥檓 going to pass the baton back to Allie, who鈥檚 going to talk about the difference between committee hearings and markups tomorrow.