text: So much for transparency in government.
  Why the need to hold a closed door meeting if not to browbeat dissenters ?
  How can the government representative in Senate reasonably claim to be "independent ?"
  
  I'm not so concerned about a secretly partisan, non partisan Senate as I am about a bunch of appointed people who are representatives of single interest groups and have little regard to to good of all. The advantage of party discipline is that it prevents the kind of horse trading of votes over issues that shows no regard for the needs of the country as a whole. Hopefully this can be avoided.
  
  In the meantime, there are clearly some birthing pains for this new structure.