Your Daily Dose of BuzzFlash at Truthout, via my pal Mark Karlin:

So the Senate GOP successfully filibustered the nomination of Chuck Hagel to become Secretary of Defense, replacing Leon Panetta.  This is the first time that a defense secretary nomination has been stalled by a filibuster – and this is a filibuster to prevent a vote from even happening.

In part, Harry Reid and Carl Levin deserve some of the blame for this, because per the flaccid Democratic caucus, they led the opposition to eliminating obstructive non-filibuster filibusters such as this.  [...]

Hey, Harry, they are hardwired to be pernicious and ignore civility, what did you expect?

Meanwhile, Lindsey Graham – one of the three pro-war amigos with John McCain and ex-Senator Joe Lieberman – is “demanding” more answers on Benghazi.  Good grief, will someone give that man a sedative?  This Benghazi nonsense has been virtually the sole GOP foreign policy concern for months now.  And it comes from a caucus that gave carte blanche to the multiple deceptions and lies that the Bush/Cheney administration used to launch a ruinous war in Iraq.  We should also mention that it is the same caucus that gave Bush a pass on 9/11, even though he had been warned that something like the terrorist attack was probably imminent – and he did absolutely nothing to prevent it.

Compare the treatment of Hagel to how the Democrats historically dealt with Dick Cheney’s nomination as secretary of defense under President George Herbert Walker Bush.  The Dickster received a 92-0 confirmation vote – no dissenting Democratic senators there.  

The second time Rumsfeld was nominated for secretary of defense (he had first served in that position under President Gerald Ford), he was approved along with six other George W. Bush cabinet nominees by a voice vote in the Senate [...]

There’s a lesson to be learned here for the Democrats in the Senate: speak loudly and carry a big stick, but they never appear to learn it.

Please read the entire post here.