Senator objects to bill requiring approval before razing memorial, no vote needed to skip it

…(cont) Eleven days later, on September 15, a federal judge made that plain. Christopher Cooper ruled that the Kennedy Center board's attempt to put the president's name on the outside of the building was still unlawful, no matter that the board called it an honor for his "current" service. The president answered that the Kennedy Center was "destined to doom" — a threat, stated as weather, about a building he does not own and cannot rename, but can apparently still tear down.

That threat is what Monday's bill was written for. Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, co-led the Protecting Presidential Memorials Act, a bill requiring congressional approval before a president demolishes a memorial to a president. Merkley tried to pass it by unanimous consent — the Senate's fast lane, open to any bill so long as nobody stands up and says no. Sen. Mike Lee stood up and said no. It got ninety-nine.

Survived by: a federal judge's order that the president's name does not go on the building anyway, which required no act of Congress to enforce, only a courtroom. Preceded in death by: the president's own words, three weeks earlier, guessing that nobody would put his name up once he was gone — an admission that outdid the objection that followed it, since it conceded the memorial he wants was never really about memory.

Penny-ante is the word for a procedural block that costs one senator nothing and the public a wrecking ball's worth of discretion. In lieu of flowers, the Senate could pass the Protecting Presidential Memorials Act the ordinary way — on the floor, by name, on the record — the next time it comes up.