In the eye of the Beholder

The Democrats are crowing over their Rule 21 coup this afternoon. They managed to push forward on a Congressional investigation of bad intelligence in the Iraq War AKA Plamegate. Crowing over at the Daily Kos the the "Reid just proved to Senate Republicans that Democrats don't need the filibuster to stop Alito (or any other judge, for that matter)."

Excuse me if I don't see anything of the sort. A special prosecuter has still not been able to bring forth an indictment on the actual Plamegate issue. Maybe he will. My personal feeling is that there is not going to be enough for an indictment. As far as the intelligence, I have felt and will continue to think until proven otherwise that some mid level people, wanting to look good to their superiors, massaged or interpreted the data in the way they thought their bosses wanted. I doubt a Congressional investigation finds anything.

As far as the parlimentary parlor tricks that the Democrats are crowing about as ways of stopping Alito's nomination are strictly that, tricks. There will be no treat for the Democrats. If they wish to look obstructionist[something that has been shown in the past to be detrimental to the party attempting it], it will only last so long. Alito will be confirmed.

This was a petty tit-for-tat from all sounds of it. Kids throwing a tantrum. Paper victory that is pretty useless.

UPDATE: Heck, not even getting anything new. The report was due in a few days anyways. Leadership was told it was already going to be coming. In other words, an even bigger political play that was pointless.