Coburn wins, Reid whines

Sen. Reid's "Coburn Omnibus" bill, designed to be rammed through the Senate with as little debate and amendment as possible, failed to get the 60 votes necessary to proceed.

The MSM is still portraying the 35 bills contained in the omnibus as "noncontroversial". If there weren't any controversy, they'd have already passed by unanimous acclaim. That's the whole point of the Senate: provide a check on the tyranny of the majority, which is especially important now that Congress has learned to trade favors with itself to protect incumbents.

Update: I should add, kudos to the MSM for even covering the so-called "Coburn Omnibus" vote. But why is their coverage (NYT, WaPo) so slanted against Coburn? Is it because he's a Republican? Or is he being covered by DC journalists who're miffed by his opposition to expanded DC Metro spending?

Reid vs. Coburn

John Fund posts at the WSJ:

Mr. Reid is telling reporters he will no longer tolerate the Oklahoma Republican blocking about 100 bills using the power Senate rules give individual member to stop legislation from coming to a floor vote.

This is incorrect. Sen. Coburn is not blocking any bill from coming to the floor. Rather he is blocking unanimous consent, because he wants those bills to come to the floor, where they can be debated and amended.

It's hard to tell where the error in the post comes from, whether it originated with Reid or was introduced by Fund. Either way, it doesn't help Coburn's cause.

Posting from the new 3G iPhone

So far I'm liking it well enough. As with all PDA's, the keyboard is not optimal for written composition, but I like it better than any other hand-held I've tried. I really like the iPhone version of Safari. It helps to have the larger screen, but what's really nice are the zoom and scroll functions. So far I've only found a few websites that don't work in the small browser.

The native mail app is okay, but I don't like it with gmail. It doesn't offer any way to archive conversations, and I don't see a way to search the archive. Which is fine, since gmail works great in Safari.

Things to try...
- Bluetooth headset
- Bluetooth sync (if that's possible?)
- Downloading/installing new apps

Coburn Omnibus

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) is currently blocking 95 spending-related bills in the Senate. He won't release them until they've been debated and amended. This prevents them from being passed with unanimous consent, and requires an actual floor vote if not debate and/or amendment.

Senate Majority Leader Reid has now bundled many of those bills into what he calls the "Coburn Omnibus" bill, which he plans to ram through in late July. He believes the combination will enjoy broad support, and will therefore quickly pass with a veto-proof majority.

In other words, despite his anti-pork rhetoric, Reid is bound and determined to spend all the money he wants to spend. I wish I could find a list of the bills included, but apparently I'm not very good at searching thomas.gov.

Ryan Grim at Politico says "Coburn is blocking roughly a hundred bills that are generally non-controversial or have broad support." That's the point: Coburn believes government spending is a controversy, and is trying to raise awareness.

Question: Why isn't this getting any attention in the MSM?

(h/t Bob Novak via RCP)

Mark Halperin lists fifteen ways that John McCain underestimates Barack Obama. Halperin doesn't offer any concrete insight into McCain's campaign, however, so who knows whether McCain is really that blind. But many of Halperin's points do seem relevant, in particular his point #3 is particularly apt:

3. The inherent difficulty/sensitivity of running against two figures at once. McCain will have to 1) explicitly criticize a sitting Republican president before Republican audiences and 2) prevent the historic event of electing the nation’s first African-American president that many in the country (and the media) desire.

It occurs to me that there's a relatively painless solution to this problem: don't criticize Bush/Cheney, just criticize Cheney. He's the real lightning rod in the administration, the most powerful vice president in our nation's history.

(via RCP.)

Resistance Is Useless

...says the Vogon.

Meanwhile back on Earth, the French feel the need to regulate...country line dancing?

The nut graf...

In a peculiarly Gallic approach to the phenomenon, French civil servants say line dancing should be submitted to the same rules as sports such as football and rugby. This means imposing training courses for line dancing teachers and a state-approved diploma for anyone who wants to give lessons or run clubs.

Amateur instructors will have to take 200 hours of training under the new rules. Professionals will get 600 hours, including such subjects as line dancing techniques, “the mechanics of the human body” and the English (or at least Texan) language. They will also learn how to teach line dancing to the elderly.

The cost of the courses, about €2,000 (£1,570) for the professionals and €500 for the amateurs, will be largely met by taxpayers. Mr Chauveau said the regulations highlighted the French state's obsessive desire to organise all public activity. “France is the only country in Europe apart from Greece where sport is controlled through the state,” he said. “Line dancing is now considered a sport, so it is being controlled, too.”

(Via Instapundit.)

Sen. Clinton and Anti-Woman Bias

E.J. Dionne notes that many women are upset over the way Sen. Clinton has been treated. He offers the following quote from the Therese Murray, president of the Massachussetts Senate...

"From the beginning, she's been treated very badly," says Therese Murray, the president of the Massachusetts Senate. "No woman would have run with Obama's resume. She wouldn't have been considered." But Clinton has been "demonized by the press and the talking heads. How do you get away with that?"

Ridiculous. What exactly is on Sen. Clinton's resume that isn't on Sen. Obama's?! That she's married to a former U.S. President? Wow.