Harry Reid scored a minor victory yesterday. Republicans caved and allowed a vote on some executive branch nominations, getting nothing in return, but the Senate remains incapacitated and Obama’s judicial nominations remain frozen. What else is new, right?
Well, what’s new, apparently, is that this entire unprecedented situation is the fault of both parties, as everything is in our media’s fantasy world:
The agreement came after a meeting on Monday night where 98 Senators vented for over three hours. Members of both parties admitted some culpability in the political fighting, with Democrats conceding that their headlong drive to alter the rules may have been overly aggressive.
(via NYTimes.com)
Well, that paragraph sent me to the dictionary in much confusion, for I had never seen the words “headlong” and “aggressive” applied to a group of people that endured 6 years of provocation and then boldly insisted on a half measure response. We all have our blind spots, and maybe I missed school the day these words were defined. So, I clicked on the American Heritage Unabridged, 4th, and here’s the definition of “headlong”:
In an impetuous manner; rashly.
Well, that couldn’t be right. So it occurred to me that maybe the meaning recently changed, so I went to the 5th edition, where much to my surprise I found the same definition. This left me in such confusion that I couldn’t bring myself to look up “aggressive”. Let it lie, I thought. The Times must have added its very own dictionary to its stylebook. Or perhaps, by virtue of the media’s iron law of partisan equivalency, these words were necessary to “balance” the story. After all, if everyone’s to blame, then no one’s to blame, and that is the all purpose meme that the media has no desire to abandon.
By the way, lest you think what happened yesterday signals a brighter tomorrow, check this out. In all likelihood Obama’s judicial nominees will all spend their remaining days as lowly lawyers rather than exalted jurists. Harry Reid has won his skirmish, but like McClellan, he’ll likely avoid battle in future days. Pity the man who can be outfoxed by Mitch McConnell.
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