On the tenth anniversary of the war in Iraq it is worth remembering how many people were deeply wrong. Top politicians in both parties, administration officials, reporters, columnists, and even many bloggers. They were wrong about the weapons of mass destruction, about the links to Al-Qaeda, and about how quickly the war would end. Over the past decade basically none of these people have faced any repercussions for being so wrong. In fact many of them are still working at their same jobs or have much better jobs.

The sequester was created in the most bipartisan way possible. It was a proposal from a Democratic President to find a way around an impasse with House Republicans that both sides each believed would eventually advance their long-term agendas. It was approved by a Republican House, a Democratic Senate and signed by a Democratic President. As a result, everyone will agree this is a truly horrible policy that will needlessly hurt the country, but no one responsible for it will probably ever pay a political price.

And now, here’s my entry in the “Why the movie Lincoln is not a plausible model for political debates of the recent past and future.”

My understanding is that Republicans oppose the DREAM Act because they oppose a path to citizenship for any undocumented immigrant, regardless of their circumstances. They don’t really care if the individual came into the country as a child, brought by their parents, with no recollection of their former country.

So I’m puzzled by this attempt to craft a Republican alternative to the DREAM Act, led by Florida’s Marco Rubio, which seems to be merely a weaker version of the original bill, with all of the path to citizenship elements that would make anyone disinclined to support an “amnesty” bill scream.

With the election over, let the haggling begin. I’m not talking about the back-and-forth over the Fiscal Hillock (h/t Jackdawracy at Calculated Risk). I’m talking about nominations. Judicial nominations in particular.

Consideration of dozens of nominees have been stalled in the Senate, and dozens more vacancies lack nominees. Everyone who follows these things knew that any action this summer, as the election was getting into full swing, was not going to happen. Well, the election is over . . . and still the nominees wait. The judicial emergencies continue, and justice is increasingly delayed for thousands as dockets around the country continue to build.

Both Obama and the GOP need to demonstrate that they can do more than simply talk about working with one another; moving forward on these judicial nominations would be a good place to turn their pretty words into action.

It’s just a few days out from a national election, the spotlight is more closely affixed on Washington, and everyone is on their best behavior. That’s the best reading of several comments made over the last 48 hours, designed to get the media to believe that we’ve entered a new era of bipartisanship, and more importantly gain the moral high ground for the battles that are sure to come.

The only remaining moment of pageantry that comes close to redeeming our rotten simulacrum of “democracy” happens in an election year, which briefly forces the two parties to somehow differentiate themselves from one another, at least temporarily. Now that all the really important decisions have long since been made, that Republicans and Democrats still bother to find and exploit petty differences (that never involve money), is a quaint nod to “we, the people” that I’m frankly surprised they haven’t dropped already, so I cherish it.

The House passed a bill yesterday that would force the Office of Management and Budget to detail how they would deal with the sequestration cuts that would trigger on January 1 if Congress takes no further action. While it has the added benefit of forcing the President to detail specific cuts to the federal workforce, which could theoretically get used in an election campaign, the bill had strong bipartisan support, passing by a 414-2 margin. Similar legislation passed the Senate as part of their version of the farm bill. So this is likely to get done. In fact, Harry Reid said he would consider a floor vote for it.

James Pethokoukis, a columnist for the American Enterprise Institute, writes in the pages of the Weekly Standard in favor of a breakup of the big banks. He doesn’t get to that conclusion the way I would get to that conclusion, but the fact he does may signal a potential transpartisan alliance on going after the big banks.

One of the bigger issues with the lack of Democratic consensus as the fiscal cliff nears is that it gives oxygen to a group of right-leaning fiscal scolds who see the opportunity to decimate safety net programs, allegedly in exchange for some tiny giveback on taxes they will describe as balanced. You can see this with the renewed prominence of Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, who claim to be working with a bipartisan group of lawmakers.