Among the very minor reforms that made it through the Senate yesterday, the one with the widest support was the standing order dealing with "secret holds."
Now, it's no secret that I was always more concerned with the "hold" part than with the "secret" part, but that certainly doesn't diminish the inherently offensive nature of secrecy in the Senate.
And just how offensive is it? Well, offensive enough that our notoriously cautious about change Senators voted to adopt the new standing order overwhelmingly, by a vote of 92-4.
Any vote of 92-4, no matter what it's about, will have Senate observers asking just who the hell the four were, and what were they thinking? Well, here's the answer to the first part:
NAYs ---4
DeMint (R-SC)
Ensign (R-NV)
Lee (R-UT)
Paul (R-KY)
As to what they were thinking, who knows? But we know where they're coming from. And so does The Hill, which very helpfully observes for us:
The three founding members of the Senate Tea Party Caucus voted against a rule change Thursday that would end senators' ability to use secret holds.
Wow. I don't claim to understand the teabagging mind, but perpetuating secrecy in government never struck me as one of their issues. Guess I was wrong.
"There are a lot of pressing issues that we face as a country," DeMint said at the time. "But one of them is not secret holds."
Apparently, continued government secrecy is something of unique interest to the Tea Party Caucus. Well, the Tea Party Caucus, plus Senator Ensign, who might be said to have been doing a little more "secret holding" of his own than the average Senator. So far as we know, anyway.
Hey, it's certainly possible to think secret holds aren't a big deal. But whether you agree or not, the measure was on the floor, it was an easy pass, and Senators were able to wrap the business up and still make their flights home for the weekend. No matter how "pressing" other issues might have seemed at the time -- and I don't know if DeMint took a moment to name any of them, perhaps he did -- the one of the floor was the issue at hand. I can't think of any legitimate way in which secret holds positively address anything that even Jim DeMint might define as "pressing." Can you?