Author: Andrew Sullivan

I guess at this point I'll grasp at anything:

# Senator Reid told me he will "Rule 14" the free-standing #DADT repeal so it skips cmte and can come directly to the Senate floor. about 1 hour ago via Twitter for iPhone

# We are working with our colleagues and are confident that there are at least 60 Senators who support repeal. about 1 hour ago via Twitter for iPhone

# @SenatorCollins and I and others are introducing a free standing bill to repeal #DADT today. about 1 hour ago via Twitter for iPhone

Sarah Posner has an account of last night's family conversation about homosexuality at Georgetown. It was a packed house, and, although the debate did get somewhat hot at times, this was one of the calmest conversations on this topic I've been a part of. EJ Dionne was a wonderful moderator. Maggie was also sincere if somewhat, to my mind, obtuse about the real world effects of her campaign against gay couples having the legal security of civil marriage. Money quote:

Only with ice water running through one's veins could one have been unmoved by Sullivan's recounting of his Catholic boyhood, his sexual awakening as an adolescent, and, as he told it, what a lucky bloke he considered himself to be when he discovered sexual desire. As he has done in his writing, Sullivan celebrated his gayness, describing his sexuality as a divine gift, and that "the first person I came out to was God." Even the persistence of the teenage erection was depicted as a wondrous joy. That same-sex sexual desire — not just civil rights — is equally celebrated in God's eyes was both a divine (double entendre intended) and human argument to which Gallagher had no decent (again, double entendre intended) rebuttal.

More reviews of the debate here, here, here, and here.

Jim Burroway pulls no punches:

Just like before, political gamesmanship trumps sound policy. But the problem wasn’t just in the Senate. Remember, it was President Obama who insisted that the Senate shouldn’t act before the Defense Department’s study was released — a report that wasn’t scheduled to be released until December 1, right in the middle of a lame duck session following what everyone knew would be a contentious mid-term election. This was his brilliant plan, and he owns the outcome as much as Reid and the GOP.

Jonathan Bernstein is befuddled:

I still don't understand Reid's thinking.  Yes, Republicans could have dragged things out until January…but so what, if ultimately it gets done before the clock runs out?  And what exactly is the downside if they try and just can't quite finish?

Meanwhile, Mark Udall just went to the Senate floor and said he'd like to see either another bite at this, or an attempt to bring back DADT as a standalone bill.  Reid's office apparently believes that, too, could be blocked, but I'm not really sure why they believe that, if there are really 60 votes for it and, say, ten calendar days remain after the rest of their business gets done.

 Ezra Klein uses the vote to attack the filibuster:

The diffusion of responsibility that comes from deciding law through complex parliamentary gamesmanship rather than simple majority-rules votes is the problem. What happened today is that a majority of the Senate voted for a bill that the majority of Americans support. The bill did not pass. Neither Harry Reid nor Susan Collins are ultimately responsible for that. The rules of the Senate are.

Sam Stein tweets:

On Manchin, aide says: “I would say that if he was somehow the 60th vote, I do not think he would have voted the way he did"

A reader writes:

A point that I keep coming back to over the past couple of days is something that Obama understands and lives out. Despite his own ideological bent, he knows he is the president of everyone and not just democrats.  He seems to take that idea very seriously and I think it has and will continue to stand him in good stead.

I agree – which makes him the polar opposite to the current GOP, epitomized by Palin. They govern and will govern solely for those who voted for them. Because they regard everyone else as fake Americans. Obama? An altogether more serious and responsible figure.

He thought four days' debate would stretch into much longer. Sargent:

I have now spoken to a senior Senate aide and put together what happened and why Reid did this.

Reid concluded that even if Collins was sincere in her promise to vote for repeal if given the four days of debate, there was no way to prevent the proceedings from taking longer, the aide says. Reid decided that the cloture vote, the 30 hours of required post-cloture debate, and procedural tricks mounted by conservative Senators who adamantly oppose repeal would have dragged the process on far longer.

"It would have been much more than four days," the aide says. "Her suggestions were flat out unworkable given how the Senate really operates. You can talk about four days until the cows come home. That has very little meaning for Coburn and DeMint and others who have become very skilled at grinding this place to a halt."

The bottom line: "Reid couldn't be certain conservative Senators wouldn't use the proceedings to foul up the Senate, with time running out on other major priorities." So, once again, the gays go to the back of line. Reid shares some of this blame – but the only real reason this hasn't gotten through is Republican opposition, in particular McCain. 

As student rioters ran through London's streets, attacking even a car containing the Prince of Wales and Camilla, the Coalition government got their rises in student tuition fees through Parliament. But the cost to the Liberal-Tory alliance has been considerable. The Liberals now have a staggeringly low 8 percent support in the country at large. Martin Kettle:

More than half of the Lib Dem backbenchers voted against the government. They were part of the largest revolt in the party's history. Collective governmental self-interest ensured that enough Tories went through the lobbies to win the vote. But the Lib Dems have exposed their divisions and wounds in the most public way. Things can never be quite the same. Tory attitudes to the Lib Dems have lost much of the warmth that was so striking in the summer. Tonight's Tory revolt got fewer headlines, but it was a sign and harbinger of more strained times. There is less talk about pacts or mergers now. The best of the Tory bloggers, Tim Montgomerie, claims fewer than one in five Tories want the coalition to go "on and on".

Meanwhile the Lib Dems have only their survival to cheer.

That's hardly unimportant. In other respects, though, they have had a bloody week. Lib Dem MPs have been like headless chickens, managing to split at least four ways tonight. The party sank to a new low of 8% in a poll today. The brand is particularly toxic in college towns. That's unfair in many ways, not least in the light of the Institute for Fiscal Studies finding this week that the Cable package is more progressive than both the current system and the one proposed a few weeks ago by Lord Browne. But it's a fact.

The threat not to bring the tax cut deal to the floor of the House seems particularly dumb to me. Any deal that occurs in the new Congress will likely be less beneficial to the Dems or Obama. Which is why this is presumably a vent rather than a determined strategy for obstruction. At least I hope so. Between Pelosi and McCain, the sheer difficulty of getting anything done in this polarized climate, even stuff supported by hefty margins among the public, is beyond depressing.

After what seemed like a reckless decision by Harry Reid to put DADT repeal to a vote before reaching an agreement with Collins to allow enough time for debate, it failed. Now, Collins and Lieberman say they will bring a DADT repeal vote to the floor as a stand-alone measure, which would require House action one more time. I have no idea whether this is viable as a way to save repeal. But one does note that repeal has passed the House, is supported by the military chiefs and defense secretary, has the backing of two-thirds of the American public, and has a 57 – 40 majority in the Senate.

This really means that John McCain's filibuster is what is killing repeal. Astonishing what one man's bitter soul can do to American democracy.

Though he admits that it wouldn't be successful, Ambinder thinks it could prove annoying:

It conveys maximum anger and carries with it an implicit threat. Even if the left can't find someone who could beat Obama, they could make his reelection campaign much more challenging, and certainly create the type of distractions that a sitting president does not need. For liberals, this might not lead to disaster, especially if it looks like Republicans will nominate a candidate like former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, whom they believe is easily beatable.

A reader writes:

While you appear to approvingly quote Adam Serwer’s view on an expanded Espionage Act interpretation, this view ignores the paramount role of prosecutorial discretion in America’s legal system.  While pundits and fringe politicians will hyperbolize to gain attention, there’s absolutely no basis for believing that American news institutions are actually at risk of prosecution.  Law professor Steve Vladeck notes that “the principal restraint on the scope of the Espionage Act vis-à-vis the media has historically been prosecutorial discretion, not the Constitution.”  Reasonable people can disagree about the propriety of prosecuting Assange under the Espionage Act.  Claiming that such prosecution puts the sanctity of a free press at stake, however, is a red herring that deflects attention from a legitimate debate about a man who has shown no scruples about needlessly putting innocent people’s lives at stake.