It's not as if we haven't heard Harry Reid make noises about filibuster reform before. But it sure sounds like he's angry enough to actually do something this time:

An angry Harry Reid took to the floor Thursday and demanded changes to the Senate’s hallowed filibuster rules, siding with junior Democrats who have sought to substantially weaken the powerful delaying tactic.
It’s a risky move for the Senate majority leader, who could find himself in the minority in a matter of months and need the filibuster to block the GOP’s agenda. But Reid — who struck a “gentleman’s agreement” last year with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to preserve the filibuster from an effort by Sens. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and Jeff. Merkley (D-Ore.) to water it down — signaled he is now on board with their effort given the gridlock in the Senate.

“If there were ever a time when Tom Udall and Jeff Merkley were prophetic, it’s tonight,” Reid said on the floor. “These two young, fine senators said it was time to change the rules of the Senate, and we didn’t. They were right. The rest of us were wrong — or most of us, anyway. What a shame.”

Reid added: “If there were anything that ever needed changing in this body, it’s the filibuster rules, because it’s been abused, abused, abused.”

Reid’s comments came after he tried to quickly pass a House-passed bill aimed at reauthorizing the Export-Import bank. Republicans objected, asking for votes on five of their amendments. Reid filed a cloture motion, setting up a test vote for Monday evening to begin debate on the measure.

It takes 60 votes — and time-consuming cloture motions — to overcome a filibuster, a tool that has been employed with growing frequency by both parties over the years.

[...] Udall and Merkley were calling for the rules to be changed through a circuitous process by 51 votes, a move they called the “constitutional option” but that critics dubbed the “nuclear option.”

Instead, Reid and McConnell agreed to a series of small rules changes and a general agreement to make the Senate more efficient without changing the filibuster.

Of course, this is Harry "Collegiality" Reid. It's also possible he's just blowing smoke to get his way on the current matter. But let's hope he means it this time.

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Sharron Angle went on Sean Hannity's Fox News show last night to promote her new book, ostensibly, but really, it was mostly a long session kvetching about Angle's loss to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid:

HANNITY: You lost a tough election. That was, for me, one of the harder ones. I wanted him beaten so bad.

ANGLE: Everybody did. You know, I had a 7-year-old boy say to me, I'm so sorry you lost. And I have lots of people coming up. And all I can say is, I'm sorry too. But life isn't about winning or losing, it is about doing the right thing and doing your very best. And I think, that's what we just have to continue to do as people who want to get back to the Constitution. We can't give up, we can't quit. We've got to keep in the game even if we lose one.

HANNITY: Let's talk about, did Harry Reid steal this election? Do you think he stole votes in this election?

ANGLE: Well, in my book, the "Right Angle," I do discuss that a bit. And you may know this, we have a lawsuit after Department of Justice.

HANNITY: About ACORN and the SEIU?

ANGLE: It's actually about Harrah's casino and the SEIU and their involvement and what we feel was not legitimate election conduct.

Of course, Angle was making these claims even before the election, and they were every bit as groundless then, though of course you'll never learn that while watching Hannity.

Neither, for that matter, will you hear any mention of the real reasons Angle lost, beyond her utter nutbaggery -- the primary one being that Republicans tried a stop-the-Latino vote campaign that horribly backfired, along with Angle's obscene demonizing of Latinos in her campaign, followed by her hilarious flip-flopping on the subject. Result: Some 90 percent of Latino voters backed Reid, and he won going away.

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There have been all kinds of obituaries already written for the DREAM Act -- most recently the WaPo's dubious report Sunday declaring the DREAM Act had been "shelved": "The measure that passed in the House on Wednesday is unlikely go anywhere in the Senate," it claimed.

Well, maybe, maybe not. Fact is, the DREAM Act at this point is still very much alive, and there are rumblings from some Republicans -- led by Richard Lugar -- that they too are going to do the right thing and vote for it.

After all, as Laura Ingraham pointed out on Fox & Friends this morning, the DREAM Act was originally sponsored by a Republican Senator -- Orrin Hatch of Utah. Now, of course, like his pal John McCain (who also championed it for years), he's nowhere to be found.

Still, these rumblings make Ingraham nervous, and she warned all good Republicans out there that they need to remember what they got sent to Washington to do, which apparently is: Block and obstruct any and every measure or policy championed or proposed by Democrats, regardless of its actual merits.

And make no doubt: Democrats are working to pass the DREAM Act, because they recognize it's a one-time opportunity to get it right. Here's Harry Reid today at his press conference:

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Those Dred Scott Republicans who want to do away with the 14th Amendment and birthright citizenship are sure being ever so helpful when it comes to reforming our immigration laws.

They won't approve any plan creating a path to citizenship for the 12 million or so immigrants who are here illegally because, according to Republicans, that's "amnesty." Of course, they also agree that we can't round up and deport 12 million people. But any plan with a citizenship path -- regardless of how many penalties you throw at the immigrants, including heavy fines -- means Republicans will denounce it as "amnesty."

And what do they propose to fix the problem? Why, amend the Constitution, of course. Why, what could be simpler?

And the best part is: Their proposal to amend the 14th Amendment to throw out birthright citizenship wouldn't even solve an identifiable problem -- except a fake "anchor baby" scare that exists only in the fevered imaginations of paranoid white nativists.

Sen. Harry Reid and the Democrats understand this. So do some conservatives. And so yesterday Reid replied to the senators like Lindsey Graham and Jon Kyl, who think "anchor babies" are a major threat facing the nation, by reading from an op-ed by onetime Reagan/Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson:

The authors of the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed citizenship to all people "born or naturalized in the United States" for a reason. They wished to directly repudiate the Dred Scott decision, which said that citizenship could be granted or denied by political caprice.

They purposely chose an objective standard of citizenship -- birth -- that was not subject to politics. Reconstruction leaders established a firm, sound principle: To be an American citizen, you don't have to please a majority, you just have to be born here.

Reid then paraphrased Gerson by observing of his Republican colleagues, "They've either taken leave of their senses or their principles.

As you can see in the video above, even some Fox News anchors and reporters are not so certain it's such a sound idea.

But the best part of all this is, as we explained when Russell Pearce proposed such a law for Arizona, the entire enterprise is predicated on the notion that, as Pearce put it, we'll never solve the problem of illegal immigration if we don't cut off the great big incentive of having "anchor babies" here.

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Now, think about this: Harry Reid is saying Barack Obama needs to be tougher. Let that sink in.

It's especially ironic to me because I got kicked off Sen. Reid's blogger conference call list four or five years ago. Why? Well, I used some naughty language, something along the lines of "What the @*#$&! is wrong with you people?" What's so funny is, I was yelling at the senator for ... not standing up to the Republicans. He responded by telling me in a defensive tone that he got calls from constituents who wanted him to be "more bipartisan."

"With all due respect, Senator, we have a name for people like that. We call them Republicans," I said. I told him that the economy was really bad, working people were very worried and were looking to the Democrats for leadership. "All I can say is, God help them if they actually think the Democrats are going to stand up for them," I said. (Yeah, I've always been this way.)

Oh well! Since I don't work in D.C. and I'm not on a Beltway career track, one perk is that I occasionally get to tell politicians what I think. (And hilarity often ensues!)

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid critiqued President Obama's "peacemaker" approach to policy-making and suggested he embrace a tougher posture toward Republicans in an exclusive interview with Nevada political reporter Jon Ralston during the congressional recess.

"On a few occasions, I think he should have been more firm with those on the other side of the aisle," Reid explained. "He is a person who doesn't like confrontation. He's a peacemaker. And sometimes I think you have to be a little more forceful. And sometimes I don't think he is enough with the Republicans."

Reid used the long road to health care reform as a case-in-point.

"I think much of that early on scrimmaging was done in the Senate itself," Reid said. "And the White House didn't come in until later. Now, we came up with a great product, and I'm sure he can look back and say I was right, but boy for me down in the trenches, I know it was a time when I wanted a few folks in the White House behind me."

Despite the criticism, Reid also characterized Obama as "a very strong man" and as someone who's "calm," "cool," and "deliberate."

The one-on-one with Reid comes on the heels of the president's two-day trip to Nevada to campaign for the Senate leader, who is currently embroiled in an intense fight for re-election against Republican challenger Sharron Angle. Obama said the race was a top priority for the White House in 2010.

When White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked about Reid's remarks on Monday, the Obama administration official declined to comment. "I don't have anything to say," he said.

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Harry Reid has to be delighted with the outcome of the Republican primary in Nevada. After all, the onetime frontrunner, Sue Lowden, finally drowned in a sea of chicken feathers and psychotic denials.

In her stead, the winner was Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle. And as TPM's Justin Elliott and Evan McMorris-Santoro reported this morning, Angle is also a fan of the Oath Keepers:

Back in April, Angle told TPMDC she was a member of the Oath Keepers at a press gaggle in Washington. On Monday, we decided to call Angle's campaign to confirm her relationship to the group. Angle's husband, Ted, picked up the phone.

"We support what the organization stands for," he told us. "Sharron does."

Members of Oath Keepers -- whose motto is "Not on our watch!" -- subscribe to a 10-item declaration affirming that they will not, for example, force citizens into detention camps or invade a state "that asserts its sovereignty and declares the national government to be in violation of the compact by which that state entered the Union."

.... Angle's relationship with Oath Keepers hasn't been on the media radar, but she made a little-noticed attempt to woo the group's members at a speaking event last fall, Rhodes told TPMDC Monday.

Rhodes said the event with Angle was organized after she reached out to the Southern Nevada chapter of Oath Keepers. It was held in a clubhouse in Las Vegas. She spoke and "we asked her some pretty tough questions" -- about Hurricane Katrina, gun laws, and the Iraq War, says Rhodes.

"She's got a pretty good track record of being a pretty sincere Constitutionalist," Rhodes tells TPMDC, adding that Oath Keepers does not endorse candidates.

As Elliott and McMorris-Santoro point out, among the things the Oath Keepers believe is that high-ranking officials are secretly plotting to round up conservatives and place them in concentration camps.

But that's not all. C&L was one of the first news entities of any kind to report on the Oath Keepers, and we have a rundown on the things that they believe -- and by extension, beliefs that Angle apparently endorses:

Rhodes and Whittle are eager to portray the core of the Oath Keepers' creeds -- the "ten orders" they "will not obey" -- as involving merely ordinary rights that everyone naturally would stand up for, and in a way, that's true. But only deeply paranoid people would believe there is any reason to be concerned that these rights violations might be looming.

Here they are:

• 1. We will NOT obey any order to disarm the American people.
• 2. We will NOT obey orders to conduct warrantless searches of the American people.
• 3. We will NOT obey orders to detain American citizens as “unlawful enemy combatants” or to subject them to military tribunal.
• 4. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a “state of emergency” on a state.
• 5. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty.
• 6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.
• 7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.
• 8. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to “keep the peace” or to “maintain control."
• 9. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies.
• 10. We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.

You may also recall Justine Sharrock's superb in-depth report on the Oath Keepers for Mother Jones:

Oath Keepers is officially nonpartisan, in part to make it easier for active-duty soldiers to participate, but its rightward bent is undeniable, and liberals are viewed with suspicion. At lunch, when I questioned my tablemates about the Obama-Hitler comparisons I'd heard at the conference, I got a step-by-step tutorial on how the president's socialized medicine agenda would beget a Nazi-style regime.

I learned that bringing guns to Tea Party protests was a reminder of our constitutional rights, was introduced to the notion that the founding fathers modeled their governing documents on the Bible, and debated whether being Muslim meant an inability to believe in and abide by—and thus be protected by—the Constitution. I was schooled on the treachery of the Federal Reserve and why America needs a gold standard, and at dinner one night, Nighta Davis, national organizer for the National 912 Project, explained how abortion-rights advocates are part of a eugenics program targeting Christians.

Even more potentially problematic for a would-be United States Senator is the Oath Keepers' view of the role of federal authorities -- which, it seems is taken straight from the Posse Comitatus, a white-supremacist anti-federal movement that dominated the extremist right in the 1980s:

The Oath Keepers are similar to the tea party crowd in that they often disagree what their movement represents. While bred from the libertarian spirit that courses through the West, the Oath Keepers don't have a formal structure beyond the vague principles outlined in the 10 orders.

They say the sheriff is at the top primarily because he is the highest elected law enforcement agent in the land, directly responsible to the voters, and argue the Tenth Amendment gives the voters all power not expressly given the federal government under the Constitution.

The movement has gained traction, including in dozen or more sheriff's races around the West from Orange County, Calif., to the northern border.

"It is time for the sworn protectors of liberty, the Sheriffs of these United States of America, to walk tall and stand up for our Constitution and Bill of Rights," proclaimed Larimer County, Colo., candidate Carl Bruning in his campaign literature.

Someone will have to ask Sharron Angle if she believes that her local sheriff has more real authority under the Constitution than a United States Senator.

Among other things.

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Well, if you were only to listen to Beltway media Villagers like Suzanne Gamboa at the AP, you'd think that President Obama had magically swept immigration reform off the national agenda by simply pointing out that getting it passed would be tough -- one day before Democrats unveiled their "framework" for comprehensive immigration reform.

As Bob Menendez explains to John King in the video above, the proposal includes lots of Republican ideas, mostly as a standing invitation to Republicans to actually participate in the process rather than resorting to the reflexive opposition that's come to characterize their behavior in the past year. Whether they will or not is going to be up to them -- though Democrats will be capable of at least proceeding with the debate without them.

And at this point -- considering that it took over a year to pass health-care reform -- that's probably the best Dems can hope for. But there's no doubt it's past time to begin the national discussion. Immigration reform is far from dead.

Here's a PDF of the Democrats' framework. And as you can see, it has a lot of good ideas in it -- and one amazingly, gobsmackingly bad one.

Adam Luna at America's Voice offers a preview of the pros and cons of the framework provided so far:

The pros:

1. The framework describes a plan to immediately register undocumented immigrants and establishes a temporary immigration status so that they can work legally, pay taxes, travel abroad, and no longer live in fear of deportation. Eligible immigrants and temporary protected status (TPS) holders will be considered for the first step of the legalization program, an interim “Lawful Prospective Immigrant” (LPI) status, as soon as the program is up and running. After eight years, these immigrants can apply for green cards and get on a path to full U.S. citizenship.

2. DREAM Act is included.

3. AgJOBS is included.

4. Permanent partners immigration provisions included.

5. On family-based immigration: family immigration backlog would be cleared in eight years. Spouses and children of Legal Permanent Residents are moved to “immediate relative” immigration category, reducing their waiting period to enter the U.S. now and in the future

6. Increased labor protections and remedies, as well as a commission to determine future employment-based visa numbers based on labor market needs.

On the other hand, the framework also includes some provisions that many advocates for comprehensive immigration reform are not going to like, particularly in the enforcement sections. Senator Menendez said as much at yesterday’s press conference. Some of the “zero tolerance” language governing future deportation rules raises red flags, given our past experience with immigration laws like those passed in 1996. Legal experts are dissecting the outline now, and we look forward to their review of the detention and deportation provisions in the coming days.

But without question the worst idea in the plan is the proposal to create a biometric National ID system in which everyone in the country would be required to carry a card containing their personal histories embedded inside:

Democratic leaders have proposed requiring every worker in the nation to carry a national identification card with biometric information, such as a fingerprint, within the next six years, according to a draft of the measure.

The proposal is one of the biggest differences between the newest immigration reform proposal and legislation crafted by late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

The national ID program would be titled the Believe System, an acronym for Biometric Enrollment, Locally stored Information and Electronic Verification of Employment.

It would require all workers across the nation to carry a card with a digital encryption key that would have to match work authorization databases.

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This is good news, because the Baucus-Grassley version was a $80 billion bipartisan boondoggle that was packed with tax breaks and did very little that would actually, you know, create jobs:

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) announced Thursday that his chamber would move quickly to pass four popular provisions aimed at creating jobs, potentially with the bipartisan backing that has proven elusive in recent months.

The provisions were plucked from a broader package of business incentives and unemployment aid negotiated by Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and his GOP counterpart, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa). But instead of advancing the bigger bill, Reid announced that he would break it into two parts, bringing the jobs-related incentives to a vote on Feb. 22. The remaining measures would move later as a separate bill.

"We feel that the American people need a message," Reid told reporters Thursday. "The message that they need is that we're doing something about jobs."

All the fast-tracked provisions have bipartisan support, but GOP senators were caught off-guard by Reid's bifurcated strategy, announced just as Republicans were releasing statements in praise of the larger bill. Senior Democratic aides said Reid made the move to quell squabbling among Democrats about the contents of the larger bill amid rising criticism that the legislation included too many special-interest perks.

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The right's latest fake controversy is what happens whenever any Democrat happens to bring up historical truths about conservatism -- like the fact that it has been on the wrong side of right and wrong for much of the nation's history. They scream and shout about how mean liberals are and then cover over these truths with a pile of afactual excrement.

Here's what upset them so. Harry Reid accurately laid out the sorry history of conservatives in America whenever important and momentous advances in civil rights and the betterment of life for all Americans happen to arise: They stick up for the forces of oppression, hatred, and economic deprivation.

"Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all Republicans have come up with is this slow down, stop everything, let's start over."

"You think you've heard these same excuses before, you're right. When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said, slow down, it's too early. Let's wait. Things aren't bad enough. When women spoke up for the right to speak up, they wanted to vote, some insisted slow down, there will be a better day to do that. The day isn't quite right.

When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone, regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats that we hear today."

The only thing right-wingers heard was that "Reid compared opponents of health-care reform to opponents of slavery."

Well, not exactly: He was pointing out that there was continuum to all of these, a common thread. That is, the opponents of health care, just like opponents of civil rights for minorities, and opponents of the vote for women, and opponents of ending slavery all had one big thing in common: They were all conservative.

Rather laughably, Sean Hannity and Karl Rove try to cover this over -- as does Michelle Malkin -- by pointing out the wonderful things Republicans have done over the decades, such as Lincoln freeing the slaves. Of course, what they don't mention is that these things were achieved by people who would today be considered liberal Republicans. Malkin also wants you to remember those Democrats who fought against civil rights: Of course, she conveniently omits the history of the Southern Strategy and the way old-line bigots like Strom Thurmond joined the GOP en masse in the 1960s and '70s, thereby transforming the Party of Lincoln into the Party of Neo-Confederates.

(Oh, and a reminder to Karl Rove, who claims that "Joe Wilson got in trouble for speaking the truth": He should ask Wilson sometime his views on Lincoln.)

And what they especially avoid confronting is that Reid is right in that opponents of ending slavery were CONSERVATIVE, and opponents of health-care reform are CONSERVATIVE. The contexts change with the shifting challenges of our respective eons, but we can always count on one thing:

When conservatives stand up to fight against common-sense advances that improve the lives of Americans, we can feel a sense of surety that history will prove them wrong. It always has in the past.

By the way, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison was whining on Fox's Your World (with Eric Bolling filling in for Neil Cavuto) that Reid's remarks were "over the top" and asking him to apologize:

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The vote on bringing the bill to the floor may happen by the end of this week:

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid scrambled Tuesday to lock down votes behind a health-care bill that he may present as early as Wednesday.

The Nevada Democrat would not confirm that he had received commitments from all 60 members of his caucus to overcome GOP procedural objections and bring the bill to the Senate floor, saying only, "I feel cautiously optimistic that we can do that. I think we're together as a caucus."

[...] Preliminary estimates by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the legislation's official scorekeeper, have indicated that the Senate measure would cost far less than the bill the House approved last week, while lowering the federal deficit further over the long term, said several senior Democratic aides who have reviewed the CBO data.

Which, of course, makes me wonder: Who did the Senate leave out?

Democrats are hopeful about winning over at least one Republican, Sen. Olympia J. Snowe, on a vote for final passage. But the Maine moderate has pledged to support a GOP filibuster at the outset because Reid's bill is expected to include a public-insurance option that she opposes.

UPDATE from TPM:

Under the terms of the bill, Medicaid would be expanded to cover everybody up to 133 percent of the poverty line. And in a move that will disappoint progressives, tax credits to buy health insurance would be limited to those between 133 and 300 percent of poverty line. (People between 300 and 400 percent of poverty would not be provided any direct federal assistance, but insurers would not be able to set their premiums at more than 9.8 percent of their annual income.)

Here we go again. That's not going to be enough to make it affordable to most people, and it has to change in the final version. Call your Congress critter!