Hallelujah, the missiles are flying--in the US Senate

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Today, the Republicans pulled the trigger on Supreme Court nominees and now only 51 votes is needed to break a filibuster. The purpose was to get Gorsuch confirmed over the objections of the Democrats. This action is called the "nuclear option" due to the massive institutional changes it would imply for the US Senate, which until recently was a generally deliberative, cordial body with a high level of comity between both parties; now, it's just another House of Representatives, only the people are not equally represented in this body.

Interestingly, John McCain just yesterday said that getting rid of the filibuster would do "perhaps irreparable damage" to the US Senate. Today, he voted to end the filibuster.

I think Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks makes some good points here: That it was the rise of money in politics that was the reason for comity breaking down in the Senate. He created Wolf-PAC to get states to petition Congress for a constitutional convention to amend the Constitution to get money out of politics. (I like the wolf imagery; Cenk being Turkish-American might be related to this, as the wolf is an important figure in Turkic culture, which importance likely transmitted to the Germanic peoples during the Late Antiquity.)