To paraphrase the Duke of Wellington after Waterloo, the Democrats came on the same old way and the GOP saw them off in the same old way. Angst provided by the New York Times:

Senate Republicans pressed forward on Thursday with the confirmation of President Trump’s controversial nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, suspending the Environment and Public Works Committee’s rules to approve the cabinet pick despite a Democratic boycott.

The 11-0 vote sends the nomination to the full Senate, where Mr. Pruitt is most likely to be approved next week.

Democrats and environmental groups have waged a fierce campaign against the confirmation of Mr. Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general, who has led or taken part in 14 lawsuits aimed at blocking E.P.A. regulations, including Obama administration policies aimed at tackling climate change.

A day after Democrats on the Senate environment committee boycotted a planned vote on Mr. Pruitt’s nomination, the panel’s Republicans reconvened on Thursday and temporarily suspended the committee’s rules, which require the presence of at least two Democrats to hold votes, and approved Mr. Pruitt.

The Democrats’ boycott and the Republican response followed the same pattern that played out this week on the Senate Finance Committee, as Democrats sought to block action on the nominations of Representative Tom Price of Georgia to head the Department of Health and Human Services, and of the financier Steven T. Mnuchin to lead the Treasury Department.

I don’t know what the Democrats thought was going to happen. They may have been relying on McConnell’s long pattern of gutlessness to carry the day. Regardless, Scott Pruitt is going to the EPA and I hope he brings a platoon of bloody fanged employment lawyers and brooks to resistance, active or passive. The EPA has been a law unto itself for decades. Even under the GOP is acted as a hive of far-left activism that was devoted to the destruction of as much American business as possible. But a new day is dawning and it is one in which the EPA will find itself accountable to both the American people and to Congress.