Three cheers for gridlock

If it weren't so important, what's going on in the Senate now would be utterly laughable. Senator Frist is threatening to fillibuster the torture bill his own colleagues (McCain, Graham, and Warner) have proposed because it doesn't allow enough torture, as the White House prefers. Here's the guy who was going to overrule the rules of the Senate and go "nuclear" in order to prevent the Democrats from fillibustering court nominees supporting a fillibuster against a proposal from his own party.

He's also sent the FISA proposals that came from Specter's committee back to the committee. As Kos says, if it isn't an outright rubber stamp of the White House position, it isn't good enough.

I am kind of hoping this happens. Although the McCain, Graham, Warner bill is a whole lot better than the White House Kangaroo Court bill, it's still pretty bad. But, if it's allowed to go to the floor, Democrats will support it (unfortunately). Same with the better version of the Specter bill -- and the worse version of the Specter bill is utterly awful. This way, maybe nothing will get done in this session on these bills, and we'll probably have a better balance in both Houses after the election.

The current state of the law on these issues is better than any of these proposals, so I prefer gridlock.