1. Reid Goes Nuclear To Block The President’s Stimulus Plan

2. Herman Cain: Maybe Obama Is Better Than Rick Perry

3. A Nobel Prize For Settled Science

1. Reid Goes Nuclear To Block The President’s Stimulus Plan

Harry Reid just went there.In a stunning parliamentary move, Reid invoked the infamous “nuclear option” this evening on the Senate floor to bar Republicans from getting votes on amendments without Reid’s permission. In short, he used a simple majority to do an end run around the rules of the Senate that make it the greatest deliberative body in the world.Here is what is going on. Harry Reid brought a bill to the floor to impose protectionist sanctions on China. He didn’t want anyone to offer any amendments all week that were uncomfortable for his Democrat Senators, even though it is a key feature of the Senate to be able to force votes on any matter that a Senator deems important. In order to prevent Republicans from forcing votes on the President’s new stimulus plan, Reid used his ability as the Majority Leader to “fill the tree” by offering meaningless amendments that served only to block Republican amendments. Republicans figured out a way to get around him by offering procedural motions (instead of formal amendments) that would require 67 votes to pass but would secure the roll-call vote to get Democrats on the record.The GOP manuever fit perfectly within the rules of the Senate. The Senate parliamentarian said so. Reid responded by having the Senate overturn the parliamentarian’s ruling. He won his appeal by a vote of 51 to 48 and thereby changed the rules of the Senate by simple majority. Senate rules are supposed to require 67 votes to be changed. This was the nuclear option long contemplated by Republicans in response to Democrats’ blockade of conservative judges, but was never used, in part because of what it would mean to the Senate’s future as a deliberative body. It was feared that it would ruin the filibuster.Harry Reid pulled the trigger on a bill that had every chance of passing the Senate. Senate Republicans did not have the votes to stop it, so all that was in jeopardy was Harry Reid’s patience and his party’s comfort over having to take a tough vote.The filibuster is still intact, but by invoking the nuclear option with regard to these Republican motions, Reid has established a precedent that will work to it’s long-term ruin. That is not a good thing for conservatives. I understand that many want the filibuster to go away when conservatives are in control and trying to pass important policy. But the filibuster is about securing a minority’s right to be heard. A government that allows the majority to trample the rights of a minority loses its legitimacy to govern. The majority isn’t always right, and the Senate has always been one of our nation’s most enduring checks against its tyranny.The Senate as a deliberative body took a major hit tonight. And all because Harry Reid lost his cool and didn’t want to vote on his own President’s stimulus plan.Please click here for the rest of the post.

2. Herman Cain: Maybe Obama Is Better Than Rick Perry

He didn’t say that exactly but that is what it boils down to.Last week I posted a story titled Herman Cain: I Endorse Mitt Romney. I engendered some lively discussion mostly from Herman Cain fans who insisted that they could parse hidden meaning into his “Today, I could not support Rick Perry as the nominee for a host of reasons” statement.To me, only reading English and being unable for a lot of reasons to establish a Vulcan mind meld with Mr. Cain, the statement was clear. He couldn’t support Governor Perry and Mitt Romney was in second place this was an endorsement of Romney.Lest there be any doubt about what Mr. Cain meant, it was cleared up on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show today.Please click here for the rest of the post.

3. A Nobel Prize For Settled Science

Today Dan Shechtman, Philip Tobias Professor of Materials Science at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, an Associate of the US Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory, and Professor of Materials Science at Iowa State University, received a telephone call that he didn’t expect. It was from the Nobel Committee which had taken valuable time out from awarding its Peace Prize to assorted crackpots, incompetents, frauds, despots and genocidal killers to bestow upon Dr. Shechtman the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.Professor Schechtman’s Nobel Prize is a cautionary tale for the anthropogenic global warming scaremongers.When Dr. Schectman made his discovery he was hounded out of his research position as a crackpot and derided by no lesser figure than Dr. Linus Pauling with the quip, “Danny Shechtman is talking nonsense. There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists.”To make a long story short, for the longest time the science of crystallography was settled.Please click here for the rest of the post.