Can we just admit it's silly to call people traitors because they say they hope Obama fails? Remember how sick we got of the right casually throwing around accusations of treason the last eight years? Let's not do it ourselves. The charge loses its power when it's something other than literal. Use it to describe exposing Valerie Wilson's identity, or calls for armed uprising from the militia fringe, but even stupid screeching opposition doesn't constitute treason.

What angers me about filibusters is they're not a Senate procedure, but just a loophole some senator discovered in the 19th century. It wasn't as big a deal when it was used once a session, or a few times a session, but now that Republicans filibuster almost everything, the Senate is basically dysfunctional. The majority wants to reserve the right to use it when they're the minority again, and Democrats could make the Senate just as dysfunctional as the Republicans have done and Republicans would rightly be enraged.

Why can't the Senate just have a procedure that allows the minority to have a lengthy delay to ensure full consideration and debate, but not stop the Senate from functioning? Allowing each senator to speak in a debate for a half hour, but ending debate when that has happened, would still allow a delay of months given how many times of business the Senate has to take up, but the delay wouldn't be forever, nor would the minority get to dictate business anymore.

The reason for Reid voting for cloture is motions to reconsider have to come from someone from the winning side. Since Reid voted against cloture and the NOs won, he can now move to vote again.

I'm with bdop4. Her call for a truth commission isn't the act of someone with something to hide. Making a big deal of this at a press conference and accusing the CIA of misleading her in 2002 also aren't acts of someone with something to hide. I thought she seemed confident of her position.

I want Democrats to use this Pelosi-hunt to get the truth commission Republicans have been resisting. We know they have a lot more to hide --- something to do with actually being able to give orders as opposed to maybe having been told something without the authority to do anything about it.

By setting up Pelosi, the Republicans made it harder to claim an investigation is just a partisan witch hunt. Let's call their bluff, and demand all the memos, briefings etc.

If Wadhams and Barbour are the grownups, the GOP is in worse shape than I thought. I was wasn't betting money on a short term comeback.

This isn't the government. This is a party. Though we can see why things go as they do when these people run governments.

and also @idiot hedge funds

You get so caught up in your hatred of unions that you can't think for a moment that it's in the national interest to preserve American jobs and the American manufacturing base, of which the auto industry is a big part. "Country first"? Apparently not. If the auto industry was non-union but otherwise in the same circumstances, Obama would have done the same thing. And the hedge fund would try as hard to screw it up, but at least they'd have to blame something other than the UAW.

And maybe, now that we see how easily big money screws over workers, it's obvious to a few more people why workers form unions.

Let's all contact Harry Reid's campaign and promise to donate...provided he publicly promises to step down as majority leader. After that incoherent press conference, he has no business in that job. Maybe he would give it up for a better chance to save his seat.

If Republicans really want to make something of the Pelosi story and the media are willing to follow it up, let's use it. All of us civilized people already want an investigation, so if we've caught the Republicans wanting one, get it started! Sure, look at what every Democrat knew and when, and every Republicans too, both Congress and administration. Get started before Republicans realize what they asked for.

In a recent column, George Will quoted Thurgood Marshall allegedly showing utter disregard for law over his preferences, "You do what you think is right and let the law catch up".

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/46128732.html

Will says it's from the Summer 1992 Stanford Law Review. I suspect the quote is out of context but I can't find the article except for mentions in bibliographies. However, I see the quote all over the conservative blogosphere where I presume Will found it. Nobody provided either a link or the context.

Are my suspicions correct, that this is out of context? Do only lawyers get access to law journals and that's why I can't see it?

As a Minnesotan I hate to disprove what you said about Minnesota Nice, but, you don't have the first idea of what you're talking about. We have an established legal process. Court cases take a long time, as is known to anybody born before last week. if you superior non-Minnesotans have the magic words to tell Coleman to face reality, please stop mocking and just tell us. If there's some aspect of election law we've completely missed, please enlighten us poor passive-aggressive people.

At least I'm not the only one having fun watching the right self-destruct over Sotomayor. I felt a bit guilty because all the bald-faced racism should be offensive. It was for a while, but it became fun as I realized that not only were the racists revealing their true prejudices, but they weren't going to win.

"It's not that the president would have accepted the Hamas leader to do that, of course"

Did you mean "expected"?