President Obama went to a DCCC fundraiser and told all the big donors about how he needed Nancy Pelosi to be Speaker of the House again. He claimed it would be a “whole lot easier to govern” if she were.

While the line was meant to get donors to open their wallets, it is so completely detached from the reality in Washington that it seems more appropriate as a punch line than a call to action.

What can only be described as a blockbuster opinion was just handed down by the DC Circuit in the case of Canning v NLRB, the validity of President Obama’s recess appointments has been slapped down. Here is the full opinion. The three judge panel was Chief Judge David Sentelle, Karen Henderson and Thomas Griffith, all Republican appointees.

Harry Reid still hasn’t seen enough obstruction from Senate Republicans to support filibuster reform, saying, “The only way we’ll get rid of the filibuster is if it continues to be abused.” He has either been sound asleep for the past four years, is the most trusting man alive, or he is simply and completely full of the brown stuff.

Senate Democrats are so scared of being held responsible that they effectively decided they would prefer to continue playing a majority party on TV than actually be one in real life.

The Senate Democrats are starting to get serious about reforming the Senate rules to make the chamber slightly less idiotic. One of the changes they are thinking about making is forcing the minority who wants to filibuster a bill to actually speak continuously on the Senate floor.

I think the filibuster is awful. It makes a mockery of the principles of democracy. It destroys democratic accountability. It enable politicians to make false promises they will never need to make good on. It has crippled our government. It even inherently violates the clear intent of the Constitution. That is why I think the filibuster needs to be eliminated, not reformed. So why is anyone proposing merely to “reform” it?

In a rather monumental development Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called for the filibuster to be reformed on the Senate floor.

By threatening to filibuster the bill, Lee is basically requiring it to get at least 60 votes in the Senate, giving other Senate Republicans leverage to make more “reasonable” hostage demands.

If Democrats actually feel they have something akin to a hostage crisis, they shouldn’t be paying ransom–this only encourages more hostage-taking in the future, with demands for even bigger ransoms. The proper response to a hostage crisis is to disarm the hostage takers. This is, in effect, what Sen. Tom Harkin’s (D-IA) push to end the current filibuster would do at the beginning of next year.

The Senate Republicans have made it clear since the beginning of 2009 they had no desire to reach bipartisan compromise with the Democrats. Instead they choose the surprisingly successful strategy pure obstructionism using a set of broken and arcane Senate rules. By effectively preventing the Democrats from governing (or preventing the Dems from governing effectively, take your pick), the Republicans have been able to tarnish their opponents in the eye’s of many voters, and therefore improve the GOP’s own election prospects.