Within one week Republicans are going to grab the national spotlight on two huge issues that should be the realm of the party who stands up for the little guy. That party used to be the Democratic party. How can they let this happen?

On Friday, at the CPAC convention, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Richard Fisher is going to call for breaking up the big banks in the wake of a failed Dodd-Frank bill.

On first glance, it is a simple question to be laughed at or outright dismissed because someone with a lack of knowledge on the Global War on Terrorism would think it could never happen. That is how a number of people who consider themselves to be “serious” individuals reacted to the question of whether the president could authorize a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil, which Senator Rand Paul forced Attorney General Eric Holder to answer without equivocation. However, when considering all the powers both President George W. Bush and now President Barack Obama have claimed and embraced in the Global War on Terrorism to target, isolate and sometimes even neutralize individuals without probable cause and only on mere suspicion, it seems much less looney to ask with a straight face.

The United States Senate confirmed John Brennan, who served as President Barack Obama’s counterterrorism adviser and was a key architect of the Obama administration’s secret drone policy, to the position of CIA director today. The confirmation came a day after Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) mounted a more-than-twelve-hour filibuster on the Senate floor.

Senator Rand Paul took to the floor of the Senate on Wednesday to filibuster John Brennan’s nomination to the position of CIA chief. He decided to engage in a “talking” filibuster because he believed Attorney General Eric Holder had not given a clear and unequivocal answer to the question of whether a US citizen suspected of terrorism, who posed no immediate threat, could be killed by a drone strike on US soil.

Only a few decades ago it was common for many Congressional Republicans to be more liberal than some of their Democratic colleagues and vise versa. Those days though are over. An analysis by the National Journal found that last year the parties were the most polarized they have ever been in modern times.

Republicans have made the already idiotic and unpleasant process of “vetting” an executive appointee even worse and Senate Democrats let them. If you want an effective government you need qualified people to run it. The less appealing the job is made, the harder it will be to get good people to serve.

From its anti-democratic design, to its bizarre rules, to the absurd way it is run, the United States Senate is simply a terrible institution. Yet whenever I think my opinion of the chamber can’t get any lower the Senators manage to find a new way to disappoint me. The recent failure of the cloture vote for Chuck Hagel’s nomination for defense secretary brings Senate stupidity to a new low.

For the first time ever a Secretary of Defense nominee will be filibustered. Some Senate Republicans are forcing Democrats to go through with the lengthy process of cloture to get a vote on Chuck Hagel. This has apparently given Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) a sad.

What started as an esoteric dispute over whether a Senate “pro forma” session can technically be considered “recess” morphed into a larger question of executive power when a federal appeals court rejected the Obama Administration’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board.

Over the weekend Tom Harkin surprised the political world by announcing he will not run again in 2014. He announced his retirement just days after the Senate Democrats failed to reform the filibuster, which has been a long term goal of Harkin’s. When Democrats chickened out Harkin said President Obama “might as well take a four-year vacation” because Senate Democrats effectively killed any chance of advancing his agenda.