We’ve just confirmed that the Senate will hold the final vote on the DADT repeal bill at 3pm today.

Here’s what happened. The bill was scheduled to come up for a vote tomorrow because under the rules of modern filibusters, even after a successful cloture vote, the majority must wait another thirty hours to hold the actual vote. However, the minority can waive that requirement. And Sens. McConnell and Reid have now come to agreement to do that.

Fresh off the vote, Sen. Reid sends a tweet to Lady Gaga. “@ladygaga #DADT on it’s way to becoming history.”

It’s a reference to this earlier tweet/promise Reid sent to Gaga.

The final vote on the DADT Repeal bill is underway now. More soon …

Freshman Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) skipped today’s votes for a holiday party, “a family obligation that he just could not break.”

I get that Manchin did not find this a helpful vote for 2012. But I’m not sure this approach is helpful even in political terms.

Senate passes bill to repeal DADT by a vote of 65-31. President will sign next week.

Gingrich back again soliciting strip clubs for political donations.

Over the weekend I was looking over the slideshows we published in 2010 to see which were the best photos, which were the most popular and so forth. But as I looked I realized that by any real standard, there’s wasn’t much competition. Not long into the BP Deep Horizon disaster, we got some photos from a source inside the Department of Energy. I’m sure these photos or ones like them later became public. But at the time they were literally breathtaking. Click through the images to see the whole slideshow.

Late last week, anti-abortion forces put the fear of god in enough House Republicans to kill a bill that sought to protect girls around the world from child marriage on the mistaken understanding that the bill would somehow fund abortions.

Biden calls Assange closer to a “high-tech terrorist” than a journalist.