Americans like to believe that the majority rules in this country. They are mistaken. The truth is that nothing of substance can be enacted by Congress without a super-majority in the Senate.

So routine is it for the minority to rule that the New York Times reported matter-of-factly, buried far down in a story the other day, “With most Senate action requiring 60 votes – the tally needed to cut off debate – much of the legislation that House Democrats rushed through in their 100-hour sprint has bogged down across the Rotunda, mired in seemingly endless procedural votes and Republican objections.”

Not too long ago, the threat of filibuster was largely limited to a fairly discrete kind of legislation – civil rights measures that Southern senators felt strongly about because they believed they threatened their segregationist way of life. In those days, a two-thirds Senate vote was needed to end the obstruction of unlimited debate. A two-thirds vote was tough to muster, so tough that the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act was held up 57 days by a filibuster before the measure could be enacted.

The Senate in 1975 softened the majority needed to curtail debate from two-thirds to three-fifths of the Senate, or 60 votes. But that just seems to have emboldened senators to expand the threat of filibuster to anything and everything.

Between Jan. 4 of this year and June 28, 46 cloture motions (to limit debate) were filed. The motions covered the waterfront of congressional business, everything from energy to water resources, prescription drugs, the Iraq war and immigration. Some of the legislation was controversial, but what can be more consequential than going to war? A simple majority of both houses, 51 votes in the Senate, is necessary to declare war, but a super-majority of 60 is required to conduct much of the Senate’s business.

Yes, the rights of minorities must be protected. A check is needed to prevent the majority from heedlessly running roughshod over outnumbered voices. But the everyday use of the filibuster threat has shifted the danger from a tyranny of the majority to virtual supremacy by the minority.

Of the 46 cloture motions filed in the first five months of the year, the minority prevailed nearly half the time. In other words, the Senate was blocked from getting to the merits on a substantial chunk of legislation. In the years 1973 to 1986, an average of 35 cloture motions were filed each year, many fewer than in just the first five months of this year.

So routine has minority rule become that the press simply reports as a matter of course that it required 60 votes to pass such-and-such and that it fell short by so many. There is no downside to relying on minority rule because it is now so commonplace that the press seldom even bothers to identify its proponents.

The press thus is complicit in perpetuating obstruction as a way of life. It needs to quit being enablers of the filibuster by informing the public, when appropriate, that an extraordinary majority was needed because senators were prepared to filibuster, and to spotlight who they are.

I asked Senator Hillary Clinton recently about the prospects for getting the Senate to modify the 60-vote cloture rule. She indicated they were dim. It’s clear that, if super-majority rule is to be curtailed, the press will have to do a much better job of reporting how filibuster-driven the Senate has become.