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filibuster

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Definition a tactic for obstructing legislation by making long speeches — especially in the US Senate

Much more rarely (and in classic literature) filibuster can refer to a mercenary soldier.
  • They threatened a filibuster to defeat the legislation.
  • After the 2008 elections, the Democrats had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.
  • Budget bills are not subject to filibuster because they are governed under "reconciliation" rules.
  • Senate Republicans commenced a filibuster, blocking the vote.
    Joshua Davis  --  Spare Parts
  • "My kid," Hambro said, "filibustering against going to bed.
    Ralph Ellison  --  Invisible Man
  • 'Very impressive... you'll put Dr Filibuster out of business, no problem...'
    J.K. Rowling  --  Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
  • The filibuster had won.
    John F. Kennedy  --  Profiles in Courage
  • He barely had time to wonder when he'd see it again when they were back George had forgotten his box of Filibuster fireworks.
    J.K. Rowling  --  Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
  • Nor did it help that a number of Filibuster's Fabulous No-Heat, Wet-Start Fireworks went off unexpectedly when Fred's trunk sprang open, causing the driver carrying it to yell with fright and pain as Crookshanks clawed his way up the man's leg.
    J.K. Rowling  --  Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
  • Sometimes when Rhett was alone with them and Scarlett in the next room, she heard laughter and caught fragments of conversation that meant nothing to her, scraps of words, puzzling names—Cuba and Nassau in the blockade days, the gold rush and claim jumping, gun running and filibustering, Nicaragua and William Walker and how he died against a wall at Truxillo.
    Margaret Mitchell  --  Gone with the Wind
  • They played Exploding Snap, set off the very last of Fred and George's Filibuster fireworks, and practiced disarming each other by magic.
    J.K. Rowling  --  Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
  • "This bill is a law that at its fundamental core is a reward for illegal activity," said Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, defending the filibuster.
    Joshua Davis  --  Spare Parts
  • But preventing a vote during the next two days spelled only one word—filibuster!
    John F. Kennedy  --  Profiles in Courage
  • Harry ducked swiftly down behind his cauldron, pulled one of Fred's Filibuster fireworks out of his pocket, and gave it a quick prod with his wand.
    J.K. Rowling  --  Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
  • Fred and George rounded off the evening with a display of Filibuster fireworks; they fiIled the kitchen with red and blue stars that bounced from ceiling to wall for at least half an hour.
    J.K. Rowling  --  Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
  • Several Senators, Norris later related, privately approached him to wish the filibuster success, while pleading party regularity and political expediency as their grounds for publicly supporting the President's position.
    John F. Kennedy  --  Profiles in Courage
  • George Norris' filibuster against the Armed Ship Bill had failed, both in its immediate goal of preventing the President's action, and in its attempt to keep the nation out of the war into which it was plunged a few months later.
    John F. Kennedy  --  Profiles in Courage
  • George Norris, an advocate of a change in the Senate rules to correct the abuses of filibustering, but feeling strongly that the issue of war itself was at stake, adopted this very tactic "in spite of my repugnance to the method."
    John F. Kennedy  --  Profiles in Courage
  • The firelight glowed over the countless squashy armchairs where people sat reading, talking, doing homework or, in the case of Fred and George Weasley, trying to find out what would happen if you fed a Filibuster firework to a salamander.
    J.K. Rowling  --  Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
  • But there were three struggles in his life that are worthy of especial note for the courage displayed—the overthrow of "Czar" Cannon already described; his support of Al Smith for President in 1928; and his filibuster against the Armed Ship Bill in 1917.
    John F. Kennedy  --  Profiles in Courage

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