Just when you thought the Senate was at risk of never being able to do anything at all, an issue comes along upon which they're willing to act immediately: seating Senator-elect Scott Brown. The Senate's newest member was slated to be sworn in on Feb. 11, but the process has moved more swiftly than expected. The results of the election will now be certified by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick tomorrow, and Republicans are calling for him to be seated tomorrow afternoon. According to Marc Ambinder, Harry Reid won't stand in Brown's way. 

So why is the so-called cooling saucer of our political system exhibiting a newfound propensity for rapidity? The Republican motivations are pretty clear: the jobs bill moving its way toward the floor and a vote on the nomination of Craig Becker to the National Labor Board. (Conservatives have been railing against his nomination, à la Cass Sunstein, arguing he's too pro-worker.) For Democrats, it's probably nervousness about looking too partisan in the wake of the Massachusetts wake-up call. Brown, who's receiving all the press attention a new senator could dream of, could easily grab a headline or several hundred by criticizing Senate Dems for not seating him ASAP. Reid is probably also carefully avoiding any actions that will alienate Brown, whose vote may be the critical one for many of the majority leader's priorities this year.

Still, it doesn't seem so long ago that the residents of Minnesota were deprived of a senator for months. Senator Franken's office hasn't replied to my request for comment. 

By Jerry Adler

I think the folks who have been in the military that have been in these very close situations with each other, there has to be a special bond there. And I think that bond is broken if you open up the military to transgenders, to hermaphrodites, to gays and lesbians. --Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif.

It’s all about the privates’ parts.

Back in the day, when Sen. John McCain used to distinguish himself from his GOP colleagues by taking positions outside the Republican orthodoxy (see campaign-finance reform, immigration, torture), he did so by staking out a reasoned middle ground. But during the "don't ask, don't tell" portion of yesterday's Armed Services Committee hearing, McCain stood out for the opposite reason: he seemed stuck in an outdated, reactionary pose. (Even conservative Orrin Hatch told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell that he's open to the repeal, saying service members shouldn't have to lie about being gay.)

Today, McCain's words are coming back to bite him. Unlike his wife and daughter, both vocal proponents of gay rights, McCain expressed serious reservations about repealing the policy. Michael Shear notes in The Washington Post that stance seems at odds with previous statements:

"The day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, 'Senator, we ought to change the policy,' then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it," McCain said in October 2006 to an audience of Iowa State University students. That day arrived Tuesday, with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen testifying to senators after President Obama's announcement that he would seek a congressional repeal of the 15-year-old policy.

Thoughts while watching the president take questions at the Senate Democrats' meeting at the Newseum:

• Congress is a co-equal branch of government, but the staging of the event made the senators look like out-to-lunch business students listening to a George Clooney lecture in Up in the Air. And, of course, the subtext might be the same: "Get over it, you people in the crowd out there, you're losing your jobs!"
• President Obama wants to "save and create" jobs, but here he is trying to take away one of mine by telling the senators to ignore cable TV! Also, I am confused. Isn't cable TV providing blanket coverage of this very event? Isn't that why everyone is in the room?

Washington lately has been abuzz with the advent of question time in America. It makes for great TV by teasing out pent-up partisan tension. But it also just makes democracy better. Party leaders can call each other out face-to-face for touting bad ideas or being disingenuous in their attacks, and then there's time to respond. It essentially brings the debates of campaigns into the governing arena, and the best ideas rise to the top.

Zachary Roth at Talking Points Memo is reporting that tea partiers are railing against the Supreme Court decision in the Citizen's United case, which removed major restrictions on corporate spending on political campaigns. Running counter to RNC Chair Michael Steele's praise of the decision, Dale Robertson, the leader of TeaParty.org told the Reid Report:

It just allows them to feed the machine. Corporations are not like people. Corporations exist forever, people don't. Our founding fathers never wanted them; these behemoth organizations that never die, so they can collect an insurmountable amount of profit. It puts the people at a tremendous disadvantage.

Similarly, Jim Knapp, a tea-party activist in Sacramento told TPM via e-mail:

I believe that campaign finance reform is the most important political issue facing America. I would even go so far as to say that this issue is even more important than our current financial crisis and jobs. Everything in American politics is affected by special interest money. From who controls our monetary policies in the treasury and the Fed to regulation of Wall Street. I would also venture to say that it was special interest money which precipitated the current economic crisis.