One of baseball’s all-time greats, right hander Bob Feller, has died at 92. The New York Times obituary has some great lines about Feller’s smoking fastball (“That last one sounded a little low,” Yankees pitcher Lefty Gomez once said.) and about facing Ted Williams (“Trying to sneak a fastball by Ted Williams was like trying to sneak a sunbeam by a rooster in the morning,” Feller later said.)

Like many athletes of his era, Feller lost several years of his prime to World War II, when he was a chief petty officer aboard the USS Alabama. Our reporter Eric Lach, a big baseball fan, just remarked to me: “Sometimes I imagine how’d we’d feel about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan if LeBron and Derek Jeter were riding Humvees.”

Can you imagine then-Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield saying in 1964 that the Civil Rights Act would have to wait because the Senate just didn’t have time for it?

In a minor miracle considering last week’s defeat, DADT repeal now appears to have the 60 votes needed for Senate passage. Scott Brown, Lisa Murkowski and Olympia Snowe have all pledged their unconditional support, meaning three no votes have flipped from last week’s tally. Add in Blanche Lincoln, who was at the dentist last time and missed the vote, and the 57 yes votes of a week ago go up to 61, assuming none of the yes votes flip.

I’ll admit I thought Joe Lieberman was bluffing when he said he could get the votes before last week’s failed vote and when he continued to say it this week, I started to wonder what he was smoking. But Lieberman, hard as it will be for many people to give it to him, deserve a hell of a lot credit if repeal passes.

Our Hill reporters letting us know that Capitol Hill police have put the Capitol on lockdown due to an undisclosed emergency situation.

Late update: The all clear has now been sounded. It was a very brief lockdown.

As we’ve noted this morning, there are now 61 senators pledged to vote for the stand-alone DADT bill the House passed yesterday. That’s one more than necessary to break the Republican filibuster. And if they pass it, DADT is history.

But, here’s the but … there’s not much time left to schedule a vote. Yes, that might sound weird that it’s going to come down to maybe not having the time. But that’s where it is. Basically they have to finish debate and voting for the spending bill and then see if they have time to hold a vote on DADT. And Sen. Murkowski has hinted that she may only be willing to vote after the spending bill is done with. And there’s not just DADT. There’s also the START Treaty, and a few other things. And remember, too, the Republicans who want to defeat DADT have tons of incentive to simply run out the clock. Last night, Sen. Reid said we’ll hold a vote on DADT if the Republicans don’t run out the clock.

One thing, of course, to keep in mind is that it has to be in this Congress, not the next Congress. Once the new Congress is sworn in, the bill the House just passed becomes a dead letter.

Just a heads up for readers following this closely. The House is expected to pass the Obama tax cut plan later this afternoon, but a short time ago a rules vote that is a predicate to the vote on the bill turned into a test vote of support for the tax cut bill. Democrats quickly pulled the rule off the floor apparently because it lacked enough votes to pass.

To be clear, this doesn’t necessarily mean the tax cut plan lacks the votes. It appears — and we’re still tracking this down — that this was a protest vote by Democrats disgruntled that the leadership isn’t giving them more time to vote on amendments to the tax cut bill.

If that’s true, you would expect this to be resolved fairly quickly and the vote to continue has planned later in the afternoon. But this was an unexpected hiccup. More soon.

The key background issue to think about here with the looming DADT vote is how much the real issue is here is DADT repeal versus getting the START treaty passed. Which goes first and which there’s time to get passed.

It’s really not clear to me that it has to be one of the other. But that’s the chatter.

Lieberman says DADT should come first. The White House is very, very, very focused on getting the START Treaty passed. The truth is that they’re both very important. And both probably have to go through in this Congress, though arguably START has more of a shot next year than DADT repeal. Again, though, there are three more weeks before the next Congress gets sworn in. I’m not convinced there’s only time for one.

The latest we’re getting from the House on the tax cut package being stalled is that leadership is optimistic progressives’ discontent can be resolved and the final vote still held today, although it may not be until tonight, rather than this afternoon. That’s according to Rule Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY).

The sticking point seems to be providing enough opportunities — through votes or proposed amendments or both — for progressives to register their objections to the Obama compromise before its ultimate passage.

In that sense this is more theater than anything else. But until you get this kind of thing resolved it introduces an element of doubt.

Anti-gay rights groups are accusing the gay rights movement of stealing the rainbow from them. Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse: “We can’t simply let that go by. Families put rainbows in their children’s nurseries. Little Christian preschools will have rainbows…Noah’s Ark and all the animals…. Those are great Christian symbols, great Jewish symbols.”

Julian Assange speaks to reporters after release from London jail. Watch the video.