Extortion Day in the Senate

prospect.org — The news of the day is that Sen. Richard Shelby has placed a "hold" on every single pending Obama nominee, until the Democrats give in to his blackmail and fork over a few billion dollars in defense pork for Alabama. When a party decides they'd like to just filibuster everything — as today's Republicans have — there's no reason they can see not to go ahead and do it. If there's no practical cost, the only thing left to stop them from filibustering everything, or putting a blanket hold on every nominee to extort some pork for Alabama, is the possibility of a political cost. At this point, that's up to the Democrats to impose.

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