When Was the Filibuster First Used as a Crude Cudgel?

Drex Heikes, in the LAT (4-10-05):

... As a technique, the filibuster is clever manipulation of what may be imperfect Senate rules. Those rules say members can speak on the floor as long as they want, about any topic they want. The intent was to allow thorough debate. But in 1841, a group of senators twisted the rule into a bludgeon. Rather than lose their battle to scuttle the appointment of official Senate printers, the lawmakers took to the floor with plans to keep speaking until the majority cried uncle, or fell comatose. For 10 days, those boys heaved on. They ultimately failed, but the filibuster was born.

Over the decades, the filibuster became a fickle ally. The minority would speak of it reverentially, as if the Constitution's framers intended it as a check on majority power when, in truth, it derives from rules made by the Senate itself and is not mentioned in the Constitution. The majority often derided it as a perversion of the democratic process -- until, of course, an election demoted them to minority status.

How has it changed?

The Senate adopted the first-ever limits on the filibuster in 1917 at the urging of President Wilson. He was angry at "a little group of willful men" who opposed the arming of merchant ships against German submarine attacks during World War I, says Don Ritchie, associate historian of the Senate. Under the new rule, known as cloture, if two-thirds of the senators voted to end the droning, it ended. The Senate reduced the threshold to a 60-vote supermajority in 1975, and that is where it stands -- leaving today's 55 Republican senators five votes short on the Bush judicial nominations....