There were no cots in the cloakrooms, no pajama-clad Senators rubbing sleep from their eyes as quorum bells clanged in the middle of the night, no filibustering recitals of recipes for chicken gumbo and shrimp jambalaya. There was just a straightforward, rather lackluster debate that was cut off after a mere 24 days when the Senate invoked cloture. Next day, when President Johnson's voting-rights bill came to a final vote, the Senate approved it by a lopsided 77-to-19 margin and sent it to the House, where its passage is all but a foregone...
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