The U.S. Senate has taken the unprecedented step of filibustering a president's appointment to the position of Secretary of Defense.
And so in less than 3 weeks Harry Reid's failure to reform the filibuster rule has proven to be a huge error in judgment. This error would seem less catastrophic had it not just happened in the last Congress, had the Majority Leader not admitted to his mistake in trusting the GOP on this one, and he not had a tremendous opportunity to bring functionality to the Senate at the start of the current session.
Senator Reid needs to bring back the issue of substantial filibuster reform and put it to a majority vote, or he needs to hand over leadership to someone who can deal with the Republicans in a realistic way.
This is too important an issue to play around with any further.
Get tough Harry or get out.
The final vote was 59-39, so the motion to proceed DOES NOT CARRY!
Just in case there's any confusion, that's 59 votes FOR the Hagel confirmation! Where else does 39 votes beat 59?
And the Senate is on recess next week. Another vote is almost 2 weeks away, after the NATO summit, which Hagel will therefore not attend.
2:40 PM PT: I call on Harry Reid to resign his job as Majority Leader!