Green Eagle

This story, reported several places today (here by Politico ) will undoubtedly go almost unnoticed by the bulk of the mainstream media: "Senate Republicans caused a major stir Thursday when they told reporters that the parliamentarian had informed them that the Senate bill needed to be signed into law before lawmakers took up a sidecar bill to fix it. ...the accounts aren’t accurate and misconstrue what the Senate parliamentarians have said. That is that reconciliation must amend law but this could be done without the Senate bill being enacted first. “It is wholly possible to create law and qualify law before the law is on the books,” said one person familiar with situation." To understand this, you must know that the Senate parliamentarian is forbidden from talking in public about his rulings. When I saw the initial story about this, my first response was, of course, that the Republicans were lying as usual. I'm so glad to find that my suspicions were correct: you can ...

Some times, you,v just got to laugh. Here's Republican Roy Blunt, from an interview: "With respect to the passage of health care legislation, Mr. Blunt argued that it would be a mistake for the Senate to pass any health care legislation that would affect the entire country without significant agreement. He said Democrats shouldn't pass such legislation without 70 votes." Seventy votes. Remember back there in middle school civics, when they taught you that Democracy works by majority rule? Funny, but that was great with Republicans when they were in power. Anything they could pass was just fine, and they screamed like a bunch of colicky babies if the Democrats tried to stop them with a filibuster. As soon as the Democrats took over, the rule became 60 votes. And they've gotten away with it time and time again (thanks to you, Harry Reid.) And now, it's 70? I just want to suggest that what we are seeing here is the Republicans looking ahead to what's ...