I do not rise for party, I rise for principle.

Dana Milbank has a lovely, must-read article about the Senate fight over judicial nominations. It starts with Frist astonishingly unprepared to answer why he supported filibusters of a Clinton judicial nominee: “Mr. President, the, in response, the Paez nomination, we’ll come back and discuss it... It’s not the cloture votes, per se. It’s the partisan leadership-led use of cloture to kill, to defeat, to assassinate these nominees.” Later the R’s claimed that he’d meant character assassination (keep in mind that one of the key players is Ted Kennedy, who has a little bit of experience with both kinds of assassination) (and Frist has a little bit of experience with assassinating kitty cats). Later, Harry Reid accidentally called Dick Cheney a “great paramour” of virtue. He corrected himself to “paragon,” which doesn’t seem right either. Maybe he meant paramecium. Or parasite.

Frist claimed “I do not rise for party, I rise for principle.” (I assume that by “rise,” he does not mean “get sexually aroused”). But you’ll notice he didn’t take any chance that the D’s might let the first judge through by picking one with bipartisan support. No, he started with Priscilla Owen, an arch anti-abortionist. When a politician starts talking about principle, it’s time to clench your ass-cheeks very tightly, cuz he’s gonna try an’ fuck ya.

The Post also attributes to Ted Stevens the idea that would become the “nuclear option:” simply ruling that filibusters would no longer be permitted. The same Ted Stevens who secured for Anchorage $1.5 million for a bus stop. A single bus stop. Outside the, I believe, Anchorage Museum of the History of Snow. Oh, it’ll be a very nice bus stop. Enclosed, heated, possibly with a pool, a masseur, who knows.

I know I didn’t connect those two Ted Stevens stories, but the line between them is on the Anchorage bus line, and who wants to leave the luxurious bus stop and get on a crappy ol’ bus?