Author: Andrew Sullivan

Three Toed Sloth explains:

It was over by the close of 1918.

Exponential yet basically unpredictable growth of technology, rendering long-term extrapolation impossible (even when attempted by geniuses)? Check.

Massive, profoundly dis-orienting transformation in the life of humanity, extending to our ecology, mentality and social organization? Check.

Annihilation of the age-old constraints of space and time? Check.

Embrace of the fusion of humanity and machines? Check.

Creation of vast, inhuman distributed systems of information-processing, communication and control, “the coldest of all cold monsters”? Check; we call them “the self-regulating market system” and “modern bureaucracies” (public or private), and they treat men and women, even those whose minds and bodies instantiate them, like straw dogs.

Chait is on the same page as me:

Ryan, like many conservatives, prefers to reside in an alternate universe in which the Affordable Care Act is not a budget saver but  a massive drain on the federal budget (like, say, the prescription drug entitlement he supported.) The Bowles-Simpson commission examined the issue and sensibly concluded that building up the cost-saving devices in the PPACA would save money, and tearing them down would cost money. Ryan can't accept that. You can negotiate with somebody who has different preferences than you do. But negotiating with somebody who inhabits a different reality is very difficult.

In testimony today Army Chief of Staff George Casey and U.S. Marine Corps Commandant James Amos stated their worries about repealing DADT during a time of war. Greg Sargent emphasizes that "the current repeal proposal gives Defense Secretary Robert Gates the leeway to implement repeal on a flexible timeline that would work for [the Service Chiefs]:"

These men are concerned about the timetable of implementation of repealing DADT. But they generally support the goal, and they generally trust Gates to take their concerns about timing into account if repeal does become a reality. It's an important distinction that shouldn't get lost.

Felix Salmon eyes the 9.8 percent unemployment rate:

Right now, the unemployment rate is rising and therefore news, which means that people are at least paying attention to it. If it just bogs down, over the long term, somewhere north of 8%, then at that point the policy debate loses all urgency, and unemployment gets added to the long-term fiscal outlook as something which really ought to be addressed but never is.

Scott Brown is going to support repeal. Steve Kornacki saw this coming. He explains further hurdles:

With Mark Kirk's swearing-in last week, Republicans now have 42 seats in the Senate, so Democrats need two GOP votes to break any filibuster (at least for the next few weeks). But if Brown is willing to buck his party, it could be a sign that the chamber's few other moderate Republicans — essentially, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, and maybe Richard Lugar and the retiring George Voinovich — are willing to cross over, too. … And even if a few of those Republicans do end up voting to kill a filibuster, there's still the matter of conservative Democrats like Ben Nelson and Joe Manchin (both of whom will face reelection in GOP-friendly states in 2012) and Mark Pryor and and Blanche Lincoln; some or all of them could conceivably side with the GOP.

Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, 8.38 am

Peter Wehner makes it:

Civility is not a synonym for lack of principles or lack of passion. They are entirely separate categories. Civility has to do with basic good manners and courtesy, the respect we owe others as fellow citizens and fellow human beings. It is both an animating spirit and a mode of discourse. It establishes limits so we don’t treat opponents as enemies. And it helps inoculate us against one of the unrelenting temptations in politics (and in life more broadly), which is to demonize and dehumanize those who hold views different from our own.

He goes on to cite Abraham Lincoln as a model.

Fallows is saddened by it:

I have been trying to think of a comparable senior public figure who, in the later stages of his or her career, narrowed rather than broadened his view of the world and his appeals to history's judgment. I'm sure there are plenty (on two minutes' reflection, I'll start with Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh), but the examples that immediately come to mind go the other way.

George C. Wallace, once a firebrand of segregation, eventually became a kind of racial-healing figure near the end of his troubled life. There was something similar in the very long and winding path of Strom Thurmond (or Robert Byrd). Or Teddy Kennedy, who sharpened the ideological edge of his rhetoric as the years went on, but who increasingly valued his ability to work with rather than against his Republican counterparts in the Senate. Barry Goldwater went through the same evolution from the opposite starting point. Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara, different kinds of peaceniks by the end. We know that for humanity in general, the passing years can often make people closed-minded and embunkered in their views. But for people in public life, it seems to me, surprisingly often the later years bring an awareness of the chanciness and uncertainty of life, the folly of bitterness, the long-term advantage of a big-tent rather than a purist approach.

John McCain seems intentionally to be shrinking his audience, his base, and his standing in history. It's unnecessary, and it is sad.

Get a cot. Here's Ezra Klein describing Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley's proposal for filibuster reform:

…senators could no longer filibuster the motion to proceed to debate on the bill because that, after all, leads to less debate. They also couldn't filibuster amendments, as that also leads to less debate and consideration. The opportunity to filibuster, rather, would be at the final vote, when there is a completed piece of legislation to debate.

Once a filibuster has started, Merkley would like to see it resemble the public conception of the practice.

So rather than a private communication between members of the two parties’ leadership teams, it would actually be a floor debate — and a crowded one. The first 24 hours would need five filibustering senators to be present, the second 24 hours would require 10, and after that, the filibuster would require 20 members of the minority on the floor continuously. Meanwhile, there would have to be an ongoing debate: "If a speaker concludes (arguing either side) and there is no senator who wishes to speak, the regular order is immediately restored, debate is concluded and a simple majority vote is held according to further details established in the rules. … Americans who tune in to observe the filibuster would not see a quorum call, but would see a debate in process."

That's more like it. More drama too – which means more responsibility for creating it.

(Hat tip: Doug Mataconis)