PRINCETON, NJ -- April 28 -- A protest of a proposal to eliminate the filibuster in the U.S. Senate has entered its 59th hour at Princeton University. Organized in response to the expected "Nuclear Option" vote in the Senate, a group of concerned Princeton University students and community members are staging a open-ended filibuster in front of the Frist Campus Center, a campus building funded by Nuclear Option advocate and Senate Majority Leader Sen. Bill Frist.

The protest started at 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday, April 26, and will continue as long as community members come forward to speak - currently the schedule is full well into Friday afternoon. Speakers continued through the night and despite rain and heckling to show their support for the 200-year-old Senate filibuster.

Protesters have read from biographies of the judicial nominees, poetry (Robert Burns), parts of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, Princeton's Rights Rules and Responsibilities policy, the Princeton University student phonebook through middle of the Bs, several articles and editorials on Justice Sunday, some environmental
quality articles, children's books, as well as occasional ad-libbing.

The protest is being held in front of a building funded by $25 million personally donated by Princeton alumni and Senator Bill Frist and his family.[1] "Sen. Frist told the Princeton Spectator 2001 he hoped the Frist Campus Center would be a place where there would be an 'exchange of ideas'" Said organizer Juan Melli-Huber. "Ironically, his Nuclear Option proposal would do the opposite, and silence debate in the U.S. Senate. We are calling on him to state publicly he will abandon his efforts to railroad through judicial nominees." [2]

The protest was mentioned on CNN's "Morning Grind" newsletter, covered by Josh Marshall's popular blog Talking Points Memo, and on the nationally syndicated Thom Hartmann radio program. It was also featured today on CNN's "Inside Politics."The students are live-blogging the protest at http://progrev.blogspot.com/, and have created a webcam with a live video stream of the filibuster here: http://www.princeton.edu/~petehill/filibuster.html

The event is being organized by a group of concerned students and is also sponsored by the Princeton Progressive Review, the Idealistic Nation, the College Democrats and Mercer County Democracy for America.

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