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
Former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) fell one vote shy of the 60 he needed to break a filibuster of his nomination to be secretary of defense. The final vote in the Senate a few moments ago was 58-40 (with one senator voting present). It was 59 ayes before Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) changed his vote to no for procedural reasons.
NRA chief Wayne LaPierre plans at 5:15 p.m. ET to respond to Obama’s State of the Union address. Watch it live here.
Obama meets oppo researcher who unearthed ’47 percent’ video.
The 89-year-old Democratic senator from New Jersey decides not to seek re-election.
Check this out: the United States redrawn with a new 50 states, but each with an equal population size (about 6 million people) and conforming to real cultural zones. Visit Microsoft headquarters in the new state of Rainier or go south for vacation in the winter in Canaveral.
You get a sense of what the NRA’s about when the best case they can make for their policies is that you’ll need these guns for when the inevitable debt/hurricane race war finally breaks out.
It looks an awful lot like Friday’s vote to break the GOP’s Chuck Hagel filibuster will fall short, leaving his nomination in limbo while the Senate recesses for President’s Day.
If that’s how things shake out, you’ll hear a lot from Democrats about how Republicans have set a dangerous new precedent, while Republicans will counter that they would have set aside their objections if Democrats had just fork over more information (about Hagel, Benghazi, god knows what else).
The truth is we haven’t moved beyond the realm of typical, tedious Senate obstruction — at least not yet. Today’s dust up is much more about intra-Senate squabbling over the idea that holds should be honored than it is a reflection of the GOP’s ultimate intentions vis-a-vis Hagel. Read More