I’m of two minds about President Obama’s shout out for Senate rules reform in his State of the Union speech. I’m glad he brought attention to the need for reform, but mostly I’m very disappointed he proposed to eliminate the filibuster only for appointments and not everything else.

Wired is censored today. So is TBogg’s mini-site. The Google doodle is blacked out. And part of Daily Kos. And a lead story at The Huffington Post. And even right here. Sites like Wikipedia and Reddit and I Can Haz Cheezburger and Raw Story and Informed Comment and thousands more are completely dark today, not providing any content. It’s part of the largest online strike in history.

Most Indiana Democratic House members stayed out of session for a second day yesterday to protest a right-to-work bill Republicans want to pass. Today becomes a point of reckoning, because after the third day of missed sessions, the majority Republicans, under a law passed last year when the Democrats went out of state to protest various bills, can impose fines of up to $1,000 a day.

The correct way to stop problems caused by a perversion of Constitutional intent is not to lay on top of one absurd system another boundary-pushing interpretation of Constitutional power. The correct solution is to fix the root source of what is causing the problems to begin with. Unfortunately, though, that is not how President Obama is going to deal with Senate Republicans’ latest obstructionism to support existing law.

If Democrats can refuse to gavel in the session, they begin to squeeze Republicans toward a March 14 deadline to conduct business. Already you hear some state Republicans expressing nervousness at their “long agenda” of other bills. This looks like a winnable fight, especially if the public engages.

Let’s define some terms here. The Internet censorship bills have different names depending on which chamber of Congress you’re talking about. The House bill is called SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act. That bill is currently in the committee process and has not yet cleared the Judiciary Committee. Observers thought this would happen at the end of last year, but House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith cancelled the conclusion of the markup at the last minute.

But in the Senate, the Judiciary Committee has already cleared their version of the legislation, known as PIPA, the Protect Intellectual Property Act.

Is this the worst Congress in our lifetimes? The public now gives Congress its worst performance rating in the 20 years in which pollsters have been asking the question. Some of this new found disapproval of Congress is probably the result of the prolonged economic downturn. But a lot probably has to do with the fact that this Congress truly is behaving horribly.

Republicans successfully filibustered the Rebuild American Jobs Act today, rejecting a cloture vote on the motion to proceed to the bill by a count of 51-49. 60 votes were needed for passage. All 47 Republicans voted against cloture, and they were joined by two members of the Democratic caucus – Democrat Ben Nelson and the Connecticut for Lieberman Party’s Joe Lieberman. Both cited the pay-for on the $60 billion infrastructure measure, a tiny 0.7% marginal surtax on incomes over $1,000,000, as their reason for opposition.

Democrats for some reason allowed a Republican version of an infrastructure bill, which set spending for transportation projects at current levels in exchange for cutting “unused spending.”

As expected, Senate Republicans blocked the state fiscal aid bill that would have put as much as 400,000 teachers and public safety officials back to work. All 47 Senate Republicans voted against cloture on the motion to proceed on the bill. In addition, three members of the Democratic caucus said no. We knew that Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson would be no votes, but Mark Pryor also decided that a 0.5% surtax on every dollar over $1,000,000 for Sam Walton and the Walton family wealthy Americans was too much to ask. This means that the final tally on the bill was 50-50. In a sane world where majority rules, Vice President Biden would have cast the tie-breaker and 400,000 teachers and fire fighters and cops would have jobs to look forward to. As it is, the Senate is an undemocratic institution, and states still suffering with depressed tax revenues will have to continue the rounds of layoffs that have been a lead weight on the economy.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) told a crowd in Northbrook that he would like to see the Senate rules changed so that if a minority wanted to filibuster to prevent a vote on the bill, they would need to actually continuously talk on the Senate floor. Why not just majority rules?