Give a frontiersman coffee and tobacco, and he will endure any privation, suffer any hardship, but let him be without these two necessaries of the woods, and he becomes irresolute and murmuring. ~ U.S. Army Lt. William Whiting, 1849

Right Wing News (John Hawkins) The Prospects For The Amnesty Bill Today

Moreover, here’s something else you have to consider: if it looks like the odds are against the bill passing, how many of these Senators are going to vote for an incredibly unpopular bill even if they think it will probably go down to defeat? Maybe some of these guys, like John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Trent Lott are so associated with this bill that they figure they might as well go down with the ship, but do the Senators who haven’t been lumped in with one side or the other really want to go out in a “blaze of glory,” too? My guess is that a lot of them are going to think really hard about the wisdom of doing that before the vote.

Captain’s Quarters (Ed Morrissey) Who Sires The Dead Duck?

Reid used an unprecedented procedure, the “clay pigeon”, and then set up the rules so that no one could offer any further amendments. He turned the world’s greatest deliberative body into the In-N-Out Debate Society, a railroad job so complete that the only rational option to punish him for it is to shoot down cloture and embarass him publicly for it.

The next (and final?) showdown will be in about an hour. Michelle Malkin will be at the keyboard with the latest.