I was about to blog on the actual real live Filibuster in which Senate Mojority leader (give 'em hell) Harry Reid will force Republicans to actually filibuster in order to block an up or down vote, when I found that Mark Kleiman had made my point.

Given the increasingly geriatric nature of the Senate, making the Republicans actually conduct a talk-all-night, cots-in-the-cloakroom filibuster raises the ante substantially. If Reid carries through, he might be able to curb the routine use of the filibuster to carry out the Republicans' published threat to deny the Democratic-led Congress any legislative accomplishment whatsoever.

I might add that there are several elderly Republican Senators who are considering retirement. I'd say an additional advantage of "going to the matresses...in-the-cloakroom" is that they will decide that they want to be re-elected into a filibuster enabled over 40 senator caucus even less than they want to be re-elected into an irrelevant under 40 senator caucus.

Also I can't help imagining a caucus meeting in which multiple word Mitch McConnell explains the brilliance of his filibuster everything strategy to his bleary eyed colleagues.

One criticism -- the title is careless. Did prof. Kleiman really want to write "Reid goes to the mattresses" immediately above his post "Vitter goes all in" on Senator Vitter's leisure time activities (come to think of it the second title is a bit anatomical for a respectable blog).

update: It's spreading Ezra Klein writes

Um, Taegan...

This may out me as twelve, but I really couldn't get past the headline in this story.

"McCain Will not Tap Wife's Assets"

But at least Klein is roughly about twelve. I have no excuse.