First the Senate Republicans, as promised, destroyed years of Senate traditions in order to place another conservative vote onto the Supreme Court, a long-term goal of theirs.

It started with Bush v. Gore, when five conservative justices abruptly halted the recount of Florida’s ballots in the 2000 election and made George W. Bush president.

[snip]

Later, Bush filled his second vacancy with Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., and he and [earlier choice] Roberts were key to two of the most activist decisions in court history on matters central to how our elections work.

In 2010, Roberts and Alito voted with the 5-to-4 majority in Citizens United that overturned decades of law and precedent to widen the gates to big money in campaigns. Then, in 2013, they were integral to another 5-to-4 decision, Shelby County, that gutted the Voting Rights Act. Many Republican-controlled states rushed in with new laws, including voter ID requirements, that impeded access to the ballot by African Americans and other minorities.

And now we’re hearing (I heard Senator Thune of South Dakota say it on the News Hour tonight) that it’s all the Democrats’ fault, that if Harry Reid hadn’t eliminated the filibuster for lower-court nominations back in 2013 the poor victims of that in the Republican Senate wouldn’t have had to go the rest of the way today.

That’s hogwash, of course. Reid did it because the Mitch McConnell-led Republicans refused to hold hearings for those judges and for routine Presidential nominations, and the business of both the Judicial and Executive Branches of government were being deliberately blocked for political reasons. Remember, McConnell (he of the “keep Obama a one-term President” vow) utilized the filibuster more than during any other President’s terms in office while Obama was President. Here’s a chart from Kevin Drum at Mother Jones which shows it.

So much for that mean Harry Reid.

In other news, Trump concluded that Assad of Syria was a bad man for gassing his people on TV where Trump had to see them (he somehow missed the previous five years of death and destruction via barrel-bomb the Syrian dictator had visited on them) and so he petulantly launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at an air base which might or might not have been the one where the chemical weapons which killed people the other day originated.