As White House press secretary Dana Perino promised Tuesday, President Bush on Wednesday "quietly" and "without ceremony" vetoed the expansion of the State Childrens Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP).

Making good on his threat to block the additional $35 billion in funding over five years to boost the number of children covered under S-CHIP from 6.6 million to 10 million, Bush achieved three objectives - the proverbial hat trick - in one stroke of his veto pen.

Senator Jim Webb's "dwell time" amendment failed yesterday by a vote of 56-44.

Yes, it failed by garnering 12 more yes votes than no votes.

By now, though, most of us are used to seeing this sort of thing. "Everyone knows" that it takes 60 votes to pass anything in the Senate. Because that's how many votes it takes to invoke cloture, and cloture is how you break a filibuster. Right?

Sure.

But that ain't what's happening.

And it's why you're not seeing headlines today declaring that Senate Republicans cravenly filibustered legislation that would have required that troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan get recovery time at home equal to the time spent in combat.

Such a requirement, by the way, is already a tremendous compromise. The Pentagon brass usually requires twice as much rest as deployment. But Webb's compromise required only half that much rest. Still, Republicans said no. Our troops -- including our "one weekend a month" National Guardsmen -- must be required to spend more time in combat than out. So that the rest of us can all shop, watch TV, cut taxes, or take a "wide stance" if we feel like it.

So why aren't the papers reporting on the Republican intransigence in the Senate? Why aren't they telling everyone how they're ordering troops stressed to the breaking point back into combat while they busy themselves smoothing their pocket squares? Why aren't they publishing screaming headlines about the sheer gall of yesterday's Republican filibuster?

Because there was no Republican filibuster. That's why.

Instead, the reason the Webb amendment failed even though it got 56 votes was that Senators agreed by unanimous consent that the amendment should have to get 60 votes to pass, even without a filibuster.

But why would anyone agree to allow Republicans, who are already on pace to shatter all previous filibuster records, to stop an amendment this important and this sensible without even lifting a finger? And the question here is not just why anyone would allow it, but why everyone did. A single Senator could have put a stop to this simply by saying, "I object" when the unanimous consent request was made. Just one Senator.

Yet none did.

Not Harry Reid. Not Russ Feingold. Not Bernie Sanders.

Nobody.

And so the Webb amendment died quietly yesterday, allowing Republicans to enjoy all the obstructionist benefits of a filibuster, without having to stand up and tell Americans and their fighting men and women in the military exactly what they were doing. And not a moment was "wasted" on the "extended debate" that's supposed to make up a filibuster.

Everyone just politely agreed that 56-44 would be a losing vote for America's sons and daughters wearing the uniform in Iraq and Afghanistan. And they did it on national television. And America yawned, hit the snooze button, and slept in.

In the coming days, the Congress will be dealing with the appropriations bills for fiscal year 2008. President Bush has threatened to veto almost every single one of them, which would leave the United States without any spending authority come October 1. That's ten days from now. The president says he's going to veto everything, and we have ten days to see if he's serious, decide what to do in case he is, and then figure out a way to get funding passed.

But hey, since those veto threats are pending, why not just agree to unanimous consent requests in both the House and the Senate that the appropriations bills will require a 2/3 vote to pass? Since they're going to be vetoed, why not just spare poor President Bush the trouble and the wear and tear on his veto crayon, and agree up front that if a bill doesn't pass with a veto-proof majority, it shouldn't be considered passed at all?

Because that's the logical extension of what happened yesterday. And the truth is, it makes no less sense. We don't know that Bush has the will to veto these bills any more than we knew that Republicans had the will to filibuster the Webb amendment. And I mean really filibuster. Not wait out a one-day cloture petition, beat it, and then break for lunch. But really stand on their feet day in and day out, live on C-SPAN2, and tell America they think our troops should spend more time in combat, and their families should just shut up about it.

Until recently, cloture votes were the easy way out of a filibuster. Forty-one Senators had only to make their protest last long enough to make it to the cloture vote, beat it, and then bask in their victory as the majority pulled the "defeated" legislation from the floor and slunk away. But believe it or not, Senate Democrats have found an easier way to do this, and begin slinking even earlier.

Bravo.

This is a disappointment, but hardly a surprise.  Yesterday was full of distractions, whether it be the taser event in Florida or the charges against OJ Simpson in the evening, and cable and the blogs were lighting up about it (even the high browed NPR was talking about OJ today).   In my view, however, restoring Habeas Corpus, which has been with us far longer than the U.S. Constitution (the Magna Carta, to be exact), should have been the most important issue of the day.  Sadly, Republican senators have successfully blocked its restoration.  This was the act that was introduced by Senator Leahy and Senator Dodd.  I can assure you this is a temporary victory for the Republicans, and we will keep up the fight until habeas corpus and our country's reputation have been restored.

This is the way to win the fight.

Make them filibuster. Make them stand up there and do it, instead of folding up shop when they threaten it. Nothing illustrates the attempted obstruction of the will of the people than Senators being carried into the chamber by the sergeant-at-arms.

I suspect it wouldn't take long to see who's most committed to his or her position on Iraq.

How much do the Republicans want to avoid losing a vote?

Let's find out. Every time.

T.

John Hall (NY-19) told some startling news to a small group of people questioning him about impeachment.

President Bush attacked the democratic controlled Congress, the Senate and the House for failing to achieve his goals for the nation, immigration reform, the failure to pass the FY2008 budget yet.  He spent his Saturday morning radio braodcast to attack Congress, the Democrats in Congress, not the obstructionist tactics the Republicans are doing.

He did not mention the fact that the last Republican controlled Congress failed to pass any budgets for FY2007, and left it for the new Congress in January 2007 to deal with, more than three months after it was due for October 1, 2006, yet I don't remember any outrage from the White House over this failed inaction from their own party.

Since November, 2006, the Senate has been stymied several times due to its failure to achieve the 60 votes required for cloture. We've seen this most recently with the immigration bill, and of course with respect to the Senate's apparent inability to press forward on Iraq.

Here's my question: why are our Senators letting it all end at the cloture vote? Why are they so afraid of a filibuster?

The following is from Campaign for America's Future Co-Director Robert Borosage

Americans elected a new Congress to get things done. But the conservative minority has chosen a strategy of obstruction in the Senate. They have used the threat of a filibuster to delay or block virtually every major initiative.

Bills with majority support--raising the minimum wage, ethics reform, a date to remove troops from Iraq, revoking oil subsidies and putting the money into renewable energy, fulfilling the 9/11 commission recommendations on homeland security--get blocked because they can't garner 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.

     I am not snarking here: Ann Coulter has handed a very nasty talking point to the Democrats, with her "joke" threat to murder Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens with a poisoned creme brulee.
     You can call toll-free at 1-888-355-3588 not only to demand your senators (and all senators) filibuster Alito, but also to ask them, Reid in particular, to demand publicly that Bush and the Repubs condemn Coulter's terroristic threat to an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. This could provide valuable ammunition (non-violent) for Democrats.
     We are not the terrorists or obstructionists: people like Coulter are.
     Keep fighting, and make sure Reid knows how you feel about Coulter's terroristic threats which set up an obstruction to reasoned debate about the Supreme Court!

     Save the Republic!

     May the Kos be with you.

Bush calls me, a war critic, "irresponsible" and says I'm helping the terrorists and emboldening the enemy and doing everything short of strapping explosives to my chest.  It may be the Johnnie Walker talking, but that still hurts.

I was sans computer for about five days, and come back to reality only to see that the punk ass president has resurfaced with the tired talking points and, on a side note, some of the tightest spandex I've seen in a while.

Pre-emptive striking didn't work in Iraq War, and it sure as hell won't work in the war of public opinion.

Yee-hah! Harry Reid's masterful maneuver of invoking a closed session this week  - besides its being a piece of glory in its own right - is, I hope, the beginning of something much, much bigger. Namely, that Democrats will finally, loudly and boldly, say:

Hell, yes, we're obstructionists. And proud of it.

Of course, Democrats have spent timid years struggling to duck this very label. But NOW - I say, NOW - is the time for the party to embrace "obstructionism," ask this term to the prom and marry it. With polls showing the majority of Americans think the country is "on the wrong track," it's time to flat-out say:

It's our constitutional duty to obstruct bad laws and bad policies that damage our country and its people.