Rochambeau rules in the Senate

Tim Grieve writes an excellent explanation of the "nuclear option" and Senate rules at truthout.org. The nuclear option is of course where Republicans would change the rules of the Senate to disallow filibusters on judicial nominations.

Buried deep within is this:

... Article I, Section 5, Clause 2 of the Constitution ... grants each house of Congress the right to "determine the rules of its proceedings." Under that provision, the Senate could make decisions on judges by rochambeau if 50 senators voted to make that the rule and 67 senators were around to kill off the filibuster that would follow.

Rochambeau is "rock, paper, scissors." Could that be worse than having Republicans in charge?

Folk musician humor

Steve Gillette and Cindy Mangsen were in town singing last weekend. Very nice.

They have a few jokes on their website. Funny.

The Huffington Post

Arianna Huffington has a new web site - The Huffington Post. It's brand new, and there's a blog with contributions from such diverse luminaries as David Mamet, Norm Ornstein, Mike McCurry, Robert Evans, Paul Krassner, and John Zogby - and that's just a few from today. The posts I've seen are pithy for the most part, some rather short, and I don't agree with all the points made, but the points of view are respectable.

I do like Robert Evans Book of Rules:

Try a thing you haven’t done three times.
Once, to get over the fear of doing it.
Twice, to learn how to do it.
And the third time, to figure out whether you like it or not.

We'll see how long the writing stays fresh. It's on my reading list, now.