Jan 3, 2013
The topic of the day: the first day of the new Congress. Was the 112th the worst ever? Any prospect of it getting better in the 113th? Greg Dworkin joined in for the discussion of the opening day goings on, including the speculation surrounding the election of the Speaker, which almost nobody seriously thinks will yield any real surprises. Will the next round of debt ceiling discussions be a disaster? Will the current fervor for action on gun laws fade? What are the inside baseball political dynamics that will determine the outcome? Then, a mind-bending run-through of the history and mechanics of the "constitutional option," and how changing Senate rules got to be such a complicated undertaking. Does this make the Senate's likely decision to postpone the question more understandable? Does the decision itself hint at what the most likely outcome is? And just how did they come up with this "magic window" idea in the first place?