Today's news

Liz Winnstead sues AAR. You probably know her for the best political satire show on TV!

Deal? What deal?

The group of seven Democrats and seven Republicans, operating without the blessing of their respective party leaders, announced their surprise deal after emerging from days of talks that had appeared to be going nowhere.[...]

nominations to the federal appeals courts, who Democrats have labelled extreme and blocked for the past four years.

The seven Democrats said that they would add their weight to Republicans and break the filibuster, or delay, imposed by the Democratic leadership. In return, the seven Republicans have for the time being agreed to block any efforts by their party leadership to end the rights of the minority party to indefinitely filibuster judicial nominations.

And, while the deal lasts, the big winner is the reputation of the Senate, whose hallowed traditions of cool deliberation and high-minded reflection can just about be said to remain intact.

The losers are activists and more ideological senators from both sides who had been itching for a fight.

But the news will not go down well in the White House either. The deal explicitly excludes two of Mr Bush’s nominees, even though hours earlier he had demanded that they all receive “an up or down vote” on the floor of the Senate, and leaves the fate of the rest uncertain.

Nor was it good news for the presidential hopes of Bill Frist, the Republican Senate majority leader eyeing a run in 2008, who courted the religious Right over the issue of Mr Bush’s nominees.

He is in danger of failing to deliver what he promised: a full slate of nominees confirmed by the Senate.[...]

The deal was worked out by two of the Senate’s grandest old men: John Warner, the debonair Virginian and Republican who was once married to Elizabeth Taylor, and Robert Byrd, a tough old Democratic from West Virginia. They were joined by John McCain, the maverick Republican from Arizona and Joe Lieberman, the centrist Democrat who was Al Gore’s presidential running mate in 2000 and failed hopelessly to win the party’s nomination four years later.

By the way, I call on Governor Ernie Fletcher to resign as Governor for putting politics above job qualifications. See, this is why I am out of politics aside from campaigning and advocating.