Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid just scored a political victory by losing a vote. That sounds counterintuitive, but it's true. By failing to bring the Wall Street reform bill written by Chris Dodd to the floor for debate, and by losing a cloture vote on the issue to Republican opposition, Reid has shown that the Democrats (and the White House) have learned a few lessons from the health reform debate. Because by refusing to back down, and refusing to "compromise" (read: water the bill down and add loopholes for Wall Street) with Republicans, Reid is showing real strength, and real leadership.

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Democrats had a pretty good week last week. As attention shifts away from unpronounceable volcanoes (more on them in a moment) to the struggle in the Senate over Wall Street reform, the two parties almost seem to have changed their normal methods of playing the political game. The Republicans are all over the map on the issue, and extremely worried about the impression by angry voters that they are doing Wall Street's bidding -- as well they should be. Republicans are, one day, loudly denouncing the reform bill, using their standard Big Lie technique... and then, the next day, saying a deal is very close, and even voting for strong reform in committees. Republicans (some of them, at least) are chickening out of the upcoming partisan battle the Republican leadership seems to want over the issue (more on chickens later on, too). Democrats have, so far, managed both to admirably stay on message and showed an amazing amount of backbone in countering specious Republican arguments. And, so far, polls show the voters are solidly on the Democrats' side on this one, and just not buying what Republicans are telling them. As I said, we seem to have entered BackwardsLand, or something.

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Instead, I'd like to highlight some good environmentalist news from a few weeks ago, which didn't really get much media attention at the time. Perhaps if they had delayed the announcement, it would have made a bigger splash today, being Earth Day and all.

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The Washington, D.C. Council voted today to legalize medicinal marijuana. The Washington Post reported the story in a straightforward manner, which failed to note the amusing part of the story:

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I speak of the "value-added tax," or "VAT." Republicans are horrified that President Obama has a secret plan to pass this tax, and are shouting from the rooftops (of the nearest Fox News building) how strongly they're going to oppose it. The facts that Obama himself has come out against the idea, and it seems to have virtually no support in Congress, have not gotten in the way of Republicans doing so, either.

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There was an amusing story in the news recently about some folks who got word that a beer company had sent hundreds of cases of beer to the local dump, because it was past its expiration date. Finding this a shame, these enterprising folks "liberated" themselves 50 cases of free beer, presumably to drink it forthwith. The most amusing part was the closing quote in the article, from the beer company's president: "Beer is a popular product."

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My wife and I got an eight hundred dollar tax break this year. In fact, almost everybody got this break -- four hundred bucks per person. Apparently, it was passed as part of the stimulus package last year. I do remember, at the time, hearing something about how Obama's stimulus changed people's take-home pay by readjusting the federal withholding figures, but I had no idea it would turn into eight hundred bucks back on my tax form.

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What I just wrote could describe tomorrow's "first anniversary" Tea Party rallies. Or it could describe a late-1960s anti-war rally. About the only thing these two historical eras have in common is the age of the driving force behind the protests. In other words, don't look now, but the Baby Boomers are back in the streets.

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[Apologies for posting a repeat of an old column here, but I am busy doing my taxes, so didn't have the time to write today. This column originally ran here exactly one year ago today, and was written right before the first "tax day tea parties" took place. It's hard to believe, looking back, that this entire movement is only one year old, but they began on tax day, 2009. Since Thursday will likely see large anniversary rallies and marches by the Tea Party folks, I thought it was a good time to take a look back at the advice I gave to them last year, and the history of the Boston Tea Party as well. So, if you'll forgive me for the repeat column, while I scurry around at the last minute to get my taxes done, I promise we'll resume new columns starting tomorrow.]

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid already had a lot of things on his plate to get done in the Senate this year, even before last week's news broke. Now he's facing two more big issues in the midst of an election year (and in the midst of a fight for his own political life in Nevada) -- a new nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia, and an upcoming confirmation battle over a Supreme Court nomination. Given that Harry Reid's Senate is not exactly known for moving with blinding speed (to be fair, few Senates are), one has to wonder whether Harry Reid can deliver on some of these big issues before the midterm elections or not.

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