Multiple reports say there’s been a major meteorite impact in Chelyabinsk Russia. Videos and more after the jump. Read More

As a coda to these two pieces, here’s a straightforward way to ignore all the noise about whether Republicans did or didn’t filibuster Chuck Hagel and sort out what really happened on the Senate floor this evening.

Yes, in every technical sense, this was a filibuster. Republicans objected to an up-or-down vote, then withheld their votes to prevent Democrats from forcing an up-or-down vote, which means Hagel isn’t on a glide path to getting an up-or-down vote. Filibuster.

But in a spirit-not-letter sense, what Republicans are doing is much more like a traditionally defined filibuster than what we’ve all come to describe as a filibuster over the past few years. Read More