Good Riddance, Filibuster … I’ll Miss You

boss, what rules giveth rules can take away.  if closing in on 2018 election the gopers see nasty writing on the wall, isn’t it possible at the last minute they may restore the filibuster for their future safety net of “no” under a new dem run senate?

usatoday:

A day after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell invoked the “nuclear option” to end a Democratic filibuster and confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, he sought Friday to reassure both Democrats and Republicans that he opposes any effort to strip the minority party of its power to block legislation from being approved.

There is a big difference between eliminating the filibuster for judicial nominations and doing away with it for legislation, the Kentucky Republican said.

“The core of the Senate is the legislative filibuster,” McConnell said. “This notion that this (changing the filibuster rule to confirm Gorsuch) somehow bleeds over into the legislative filibuster is untrue. I’m opposed to it … I think that’s what fundamentally changes the Senate.”

[….]

“As I’ve said repeatedly: Let us go no further down this road,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Friday in a speech on the Senate floor just before the vote on Gorsuch. “I hope the Republican leader and I can, in the coming months, find a way to build a firewall around the legislative filibuster, which is the most important distinction between the Senate and the House.

“Without the 60-vote threshold for legislation, the Senate becomes a majoritarian institution like the House, much more subject to the winds of short-term electoral change,” Schumer continued. “No senator would like to see that happen, so let’s find a way to further protect the 60-vote rule for legislation.”

Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., agreed.

“I heard my friend, Mr. Schumer, talk about the importance of us recommitting ourselves to the protections for the minority in passing legislation,” Blunt said Friday. “I think we can do that and, frankly, I think this exercise of refreshing our minds on how legislation has always been handled in that way … has probably created a greater commitment to that.”

Moderate Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine and Chris Coons, D-Del., announced Friday that they sent a letter to McConnell and Schumer signed by 61 senators urging the leaders to preserve the legislative filibuster.

“This letter demonstrates that a majority of the Senate, both Republicans and Democrats, can come together to protect an important tradition of the Senate that recognizes the rights of the minority and makes bipartisan legislation more likely,” Collins said. “After the contentious and polarized debate of the past few weeks, I am hopeful that this letter indicates a new determination by a bipartisan group of more than 60 Senators to move forward to solve the pressing problems facing our nation.”

Alexandra petri:  The Last Filibuster
Once upon a time in a place called the Senate there was a thing called the Filibuster.

The Senate was once known as the world’s greatest deliberative body, probably because people had not seen any other deliberative bodies to compare it to. There, the Filibuster dwelled in relative peace and security. At first, it appeared only occasionally to trouble the Senators by interrupting their business and devouring hours of their time with long speeches. The Senators learned that this rogue beast could only be placated by bipartisan cooperation and sixty votes for “cloture” (not closure; you can never have closure.) This was because the Filibuster came from a bygone era when bipartisan compromise was readily available and flowed freely in smoke-filled rooms, before the members of the opposition party were replaced by hideous beasts with tentacles with whom it was impossible to find any common ground (the exact date of this transformation varies depending on your source and may be as early as 2013 or as late as JUST NOW)…….

 
[read on at peril of spilling coffee all over the keyboard]

Garrison Keillor: The beauty of adversity

sorry about the length (I left out some of the parts already reported) but with distraction of messages being sent and bombs going off it’s important not to lose sight of over-looked story in ny times the same day as the tail wagged the dog:

C.I.A. Had Evidence of Russian Effort to Help Trump Earlier Than Believed

The C.I.A. told senior lawmakers in classified briefings last summer that it had information indicating that Russia was working to help elect Donald J. Trump president, a finding that did not emerge publicly until after Mr. Trump’s victory months later, former government officials say.
The briefings indicate that intelligence officials had evidence of Russia’s intentions to help Mr. Trump much earlier in the presidential campaign than previously thought. The briefings also reveal a critical split last summer between the C.I.A. and counterparts at the F.B.I., where a number of senior officials continued to believe through last fall that Russia’s cyberattacks were aimed primarily at disrupting America’s political system, and not at getting Mr. Trump elected, according to interviews.
The former officials said that in late August — 10 weeks before the election — John O. Brennan, then the C.I.A. director, was so concerned about increasing evidence of Russia’s election meddling that he began a series of urgent, individual briefings for eight top members of Congress, some of them on secure phone lines while they were on their summer break.
It is unclear what new intelligence might have prompted the classified briefings. But with concerns growing both internally and publicly at the time about a significant Russian breach of the Democratic National Committee, the C.I.A. began seeing signs of possible connections to the Trump campaign, the officials said. By the campaign’s final weeks, Congress and the intelligence agencies were racing to understand the scope of the Russia threat.
In an Aug. 25 briefing for Harry Reid, then the top Democrat in the Senate, Mr. Brennan indicated that Russia’s hackings appeared aimed at helping Mr. Trump win the November election, according to two former officials with knowledge of the briefing.
The officials said Mr. Brennan also indicated that unnamed advisers to Mr. Trump might be working with the Russians to interfere in the election. The F.B.I. and two congressional committees are now investigating that claim, focusing on possible communications and financial dealings between Russian affiliates and a handful of former advisers to Mr. Trump. So far, no proof of collusion has emerged publicly.
Mr. Trump has rejected any suggestion of a Russian connection as “ridiculous” and “fake news.” The White House has also sought to redirect the focus from the investigation and toward what Mr. Trump has said, with no evidence, was President Barack Obama’s wiretapping of phones in Trump Tower during the presidential campaign.
The C.I.A. and the F.B.I. declined to comment for this article, as did Mr. Brennan and senior lawmakers who were part of the summer briefings.

In the August briefing for Mr. Reid, the two former officials said, Mr. Brennan indicated that the C.I.A., focused on foreign intelligence, was limited in its legal ability to investigate possible connections to Mr. Trump. The officials said Mr. Brennan told Mr. Reid that the F.B.I., in charge of domestic intelligence, would have to lead the way.

Days later, Mr. Reid wrote to James B. Comey, director of the F.B.I. Without mentioning the C.I.A. briefing, Mr. Reid told Mr. Comey that he had “recently become concerned” that Russia’s interference was “more extensive than widely known.”
In his letter, the senator cited what he called mounting evidence “of a direct connection between the Russian government and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign” and said it was crucial for the F.B.I. to “use every resource available” to investigate.
Unknown to Mr. Reid, the F.B.I. had already opened a counterintelligence inquiry a month before, in late July, to examine possible links between Russia and people tied to the Trump campaign. But its existence was kept secret even from members of Congress.

Well into the fall, law enforcement officials said that the F.B.I. — including the bureau’s intelligence analysts — had not found any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government, as The New York Times reported on Oct. 31.

But as the election approached and new batches of hacked Democratic emails poured out, some F.B.I. officials began to change their view about Russia’s intentions and eventually came to believe, as the C.I.A. had months earlier, that Moscow was trying to help get Mr. Trump elected, officials said.
[…..]

The classified briefings that the C.I.A. held in August and September for the so-called Gang of Eight — the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and the Senate and of the intelligence committees in each chamber — show deep concerns about the impact of the election meddling.

In the briefings, the C.I.A. said there was intelligence indicating not only that the Russians were trying to get Mr. Trump elected but that they had gained computer access to multiple state and local election boards in the United States since 2014, officials said.
[….]

The F.B.I., the N.S.A. and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence also held a classified briefing on Sept. 6 for congressional staff members about the wave of Russian hacks and “the current and ongoing threat facing U.S. political organizations during this national political season,” according to a government official.

These new details show Congress and the intelligence agencies racing in the campaign’s final weeks to understand the scope of the Russian threat. But Democrats and Republicans who were privy to the classified briefings often saw the intelligence through a political prism, sparring over whether it could be construed as showing that the Russians were helping Mr. Trump.

The briefings left Mr. Reid frustrated with the F.B.I.’s handling of Russia’s election intrusion, especially after the agency said in late October — 11 days before the election — that it was re-examining Mrs. Clinton’s emails.
Mr. Reid fired off another letter on Oct. 30, accusing Mr. Comey of a “double standard” in reviving the Clinton investigation while sitting on “explosive information” about possible ties between Russia and Mr. Trump.
“The public,” Mr. Reid wrote, “has a right to know this information.”

the guardian:

Who’s who in Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago situation room?

Image of the president and his staff receiving a briefing about the progress of strikes on Syria paints a thousand words

A photograph tweeted out by White House press secretary Sean Spicer has given the world a look inside Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago “situation room”.

The president was at his Florida resort for talks with the Chinese president Xi Jinping when he gave approval for the launch of Tomahawk missiles aimed at one of Bashar al-Assad’s airbases in Syria.

After dinner on Thursday night, he crammed around a small table in the resort’s reportedly “freshly constructed” secure room for a briefing on the progress of the strike.

The image, released by Spicer on Friday, shows Trump sitting at a table with secretary of state Rex Tillerson, commerce secretary Wilbur Ross, national security adviser HR McMaster, chief of staff Reince Priebus, special adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner and others. Sitting on the sidelines is adviser Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller and the sole woman in the group, deputy national security advisor Dina Powell. Spicer is also in shot, sitting alone in the corner, near the door.

The group was reportedly looking at a secure video feed of defence secretary Jim Mattis, vice president Mike Pence and others telling Trump that 58 of the 59 rockets launched had hit their targets.

The image of Trump and his team was instantly likened to the photograph of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and others watching the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

The photo was also pored over for clues as to who is in – and out – of the president’s favour.

Most noteworthy was the position of Kushner at Trump’s table and Bannon on the periphery. There were also questions over why so many economy-related aides were present including Ross, treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin and Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council. But that could probably be explained by the other business at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s meeting with Xi, where trade was high on the agenda.