Senate Republicans could allow President Trump to use recess appointments to fill vacancies and free up scarce floor time. The procedure is available. Republicans control both chambers. The question is why they prefer not to use it.

The Senate’s marathon session before the August recess demonstrated that senators can overcome obstruction when they decide unfinished business must be completed. Republicans could have approached the SAVE America Act the same way.

Mike Lee isn’t asking John Thune to do something extraordinary. He’s asking Senate Republicans to use the chamber’s rules as senators used them for most of its history: bring up the bill, keep it on the floor, make opponents sustain their obstruction, and vote when debate ends.

American self-government wasn't born on July 4, 1776. It was born over the eleven contentious years before it, in the colonial assemblies and town meetings where Americans first learned to govern themselves, and in the dispute-by-dispute fight with Parliament over who had the right to decide their laws and taxes.