Harry Reid done good today

Folks have been pretty hard on Harry Reid of late (not unfairly so) for the ongoing debacle that is the Democratic Senate. Today, however, Senator Reid said he was going to stand up to the Republicans, and he did. And he won. At least a temporary, but rather big, victory. Reid basically stuck his thumb in the Republicans', and George Bush's, eye. It's a rather long and convoluted story, with lots of hard-to-explain votes on various pieces of legislation, but in a nutshell, the Republicans wanted to jam through their latest domestic spying exoneration act and Reid said, no, we're not gonna rush it. Then the Republicans actually filibustered legislation that would continue the current domestic spying law for another month, rather than letting it expire later this week. The Republicans think they're sticking a thumb in our eye by taking away the one-month extension. They think that by making Thursday a hard and firm deadline the Dems will cave. And untrue to form, the Dems didn't cave (at least not yet). They actually stood up to the Republicans' bluff.

It remains to be seen if over the next few days the Dems hold firm. And if they don't, we'll blast them, dutifully. But today the Senate Democrats did a good thing. They showed they have some backbone. Let's hope it's the beginning of a beautiful thing.