Read This Now - An Ezra Klein Reader

Your assignment is to go catch up on what Ezra Klein had to say today. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that he had one of the best blogging days I've ever seen. I was incredibly impressed with several of his posts.

This one, on the state of the Senate and legislating in today's climate and conditions and how that affects propositions such as health care reform, in particular...

The U.S. Congress is hostile not only to liberal power, but also to conservative power, and for that matter, to majority governance. The rules trump the election, trump the organizing, trump the 50-plus senators in support of the public option, trump all of it. Liberals will never have 70 votes in the Senate, and, in a useful symmetry for the purposes of coalition building, nor will conservatives, and nor, it seems, will people who want to make hard decisions to solve pressing problems. The story of the public option -- and of the preservation of employer-based health care, and the insufficient cost controls, and the protection of providers, and all the rest -- isn't just a story for liberals. It's a story about our system of governance and its inability to respond to problems even when you stack the deck in change's favor.

Klein has also touch on the filibuster, decision making, and inaction in the Senate today.

These three recent posts (but not from today) on the filibuster, the shaping of the modern filibuster, and negotiating in the Senate are well worth your time as well.