Leave it to Armando to feel compelled to carve out space to disagree with me because I threw the DLC into that piece as an afterthought, so that it would be connected to the day's news.

I'm wrong because I didn't also tick down his personal shit list and say everyone on it was also wrong insofar as they agreed with Third Way.

Well, they are. And now Armando has no point. Again.

Domestic = flu pandemic $.

They would be wrong about there being a quorum, but the chair actually has no authority to count on his own, or to establish on his own that a quorum is present, and the point of order that a quorum is not present is non-debatable.

There is, however, precedent for ruling quorum calls dilatory and therefore out of order. That's an aggressive move, and they ought not to rule it out from the get-go, as the memo appears to do. But it would require some real resolve, and be very costly in terms of the cooperation it normally takes to run the Senate. Not that there appears to be a whole lot of that around these days. But appearances can sometimes be deceiving. We never see what goes on off the floor, so it's impossible for us to really get a feel for how much cooperation there really still is.

They actually do work like that. Steve's right in that there's considerable Senate precedent establishing the existence of a sort of "magic window" at the beginning of a new Congress within which rules changes can be made by a simple majority.

It's the way they reconcile the continuing body theory with the constitutional prerogative of the Senate to determine its own rules of procedure.

I'm not wild about the existence of the precedent, but it's undeniably there. If, at the very beginning of a new Congress, the Senate has not yet proceeded with regular business, it has not yet acceded to the continuance of the old rules, and according to precedent, may opt to change them under the authority vested in it to do so in the Constitution, which makes no mention of a supermajority for such purposes.

It's wacky, but it's there, and it's been used in the past.

I demand to know why this so-called "blog pioneer" hides behind an obviously fake name!

What are the optics of Gregg opposing the stimulus? Obama nominates him regardless, and looks dopey to the progressives he's trying to distance himself from anyway, but like a Post-Partisan Philosopher King to The Village.

And who comes out to vote against Obama's appointment if Gregg votes against the stimulus? Republicans who voted with him? Democrats who support Obama? Who?

Petition to the Senate Democratic Steering and Outreach Committee.

How could anyone who came of political age in the middle of the Dean frenzy profess to still be "amazed" at the contortions people are willing to make to support their belief in a candidate?

Nevada was actually the first state in which statewide Democrats first took such a stand.

The impeachment of George W. Bush was adopted as part of the Nevada Democratic Party's 2004 Platform.

I don't fuckin' get it.

Well, I would imagine that the surge (or conversely, preventing the surge) was polling at about zero.

Were they even talking about it at election time? Seems to me it was a post-election phenomenon.

Mississippi has the Jackson Progressive blog: http://www.jacksonprogressive.com/JPBlog /

I agree with you, but stopping escalation wasn't the job the American people entrusted us with on November 7th.

The job was getting out.

What's amazing here is that once again, I can't put my finger on exactly where, when or how it happened, but somehow, although the job for which Democrats were clearly elected was finding a way out of Iraq, we're instead debating the question of how many more troops should go.

Thankfully, there's a strong consensus for zero. But the fact that there's even a debate is pretty amazing.

I saw some verve, too.

Ew, stick out his what?