"It's not such a foregone conclusion anymore, that the only thing he could do was resign. We're still preparing as if Senator Craig will resign September 30, but the outcome of the legal case in Minnesota and the ethics investigation will have an impact on whether we're able to stay in the fight--and stay in the Senate."

Senator Larry Craig of Idaho has made the decision to resign his position and the effective date of resignation will be September 30th.

Whether it is a case of a corrupt politician getting what he deserved or the case of a naïve politician trying to do what was best under a stressful situation, the end result was going to be the same no matter what. Craig's career was, for all intents and purposes, over the moment he was booked for actions in a Minneapolis airport bathroom that an undercover police officer deemed lewd behavior.

According to The Politico, Craig's future in the Senate was further doomed when President Bush made the decision not to provide any support to the embattled senator and, to make matters worse, top GOP senators such as Norm Coleman, Mitch McConnell and John McCain all publicly chastised him. With such obvious lack of support, it became clear that Craig needed to resign and he did just that. Instead of becoming the longest "reigning" senator from the state of Idaho, Craig will now go down in the history books as the senator from Idaho who resigned from a sex scandal that never included any actual sex. His replacement to be named by the governor is expected to be Lt. Gov. Jim Risch.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement on behalf of the party's Senate leadership: "This is a serious matter. Due to the reported and disputed circumstances, and the legal resolution of this serious case, we will recommend that Senator Craig's incident be reported to the Senate Ethics Committee for its review. In the meantime, leadership is examining other aspects of the case to determine if additional action is required."

"It's disgraceful and the people of Idaho will make a pretty rapid verdict in this situation... It harms our reputation with the American people, which is also already badly tarnished. I don't know if you saw a poll lately. It showed the approval rating of Congress' was at 18%, an historic low since Gallup has been taking polls. When get down that low, you're down to paid staffers and blood relatives."

Lately, though, Lieberman has taken his alliance with GOP leaders up a notch. During the abortive debate on the defense authorization bill, he attended daily tactical sessions to help them plan their strategy for combatting anti-war amendments and their rhetorical points for use against the Democrats. And in a fitting symbolic twist, some of those meetings convened just down the hall from the office of Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who essentially owes his 51-seat majority to Lieberman's continued caucusing with the Democrats.

But last week conservatives blasting the bill as an "amnesty" for people who blatantly broke the law prevented it from proceeding to a final vote, handing Bush a setback in his hopes for a signature domestic achievement in his second term in the White House.

The breakthrough Thursday came hours after Bush backed an almost $4.4-billion burst of immediate spending to secure US borders, in answer to critics of the bill who said its security component was inadequate.

"This funding will come from the fines and penalties that we collect from those who have come to our country illegally," Bush said.

Harry Reid tried twice yesterday for cloture on the immigration bill. This move would have cut off debate on the bill and moved toward a straight up and down vote, needing only a majority of senators. But the cloture vote needed 60. He fell far short.

What this means is that unless Harry Reid pulls the bill, they are going to keep debating it and voting on amendments til the cows come home. Also if he doesn't pull it, then his threat to do so Wednesday would be revealed as a bluff.

The response to this from the immigration bill pushers was oddly upbeat. From Fox:

"I know where the votes are for final passage. ... We're going to get this done," Graham said, adding that the topic is not going to go away. "All I can say is, if you name a post office, you're going to be talking about immigration."

"There are ways we can do this," Reid said later. "There can be an agreement on the number of amendments. Hopefully we can do that in the next several weeks. We're very close." ...

"There are a lot of good things in this bill," Reid said. "I'm a creature of the Senate. I understand we live by the rules that govern this body. I accept that. We're going to do everything we can to pass this bill as soon as we can. When is that? I don't know, but we're going to work hard and try to put aside the hurt feelings that we have. The country needs and the Senate needs to do this."

Senate leaders on Monday gave themselves an extension until June on what President Bush and lawmakers in both parties say is one of their most important assignments for the year: a broad immigration overhaul.

The reprieve gives the Senate more time for what promises to be a volatile debate on a bipartisan compromise that would give an estimated 12 million unlawful immigrants legal status.

Under the cover of the Iraq war funding bill and the immigration amnesty announcement, Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats quietly passed their 2008 budget outline on Thursday, which contains the biggest effective tax hike in current dollars in American history, as well as ignoring wasteful spending and the oncoming insolvency of major social programs:

• Raises taxes by $721 billion over five years, and a projected $2.7 trillion over 10 years, or more than $2,000 per household;
• Includes 23 reserve funds that could be used to raise taxes by hundreds of billions more; Increases discretionary spending by nearly 9 percent in FY 2008 and does not terminate a single wasteful program;
• Completely ignores the impending explosion of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid costs;
• and creates rules that bias the budget toward tax increases.

"The Iraqi government is a huge disappointment. So far, they've not been able to do anything they promised on the political side. It's a growing frustration."

Democrats will seek Republican help to raise the minimum wage, cut taxes for working families and make health care and college more affordable, incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Saturday.

"We intend to reach out to President Bush and our Republican colleagues in Congress," the Nevada lawmaker said in the weekly Democratic radio address. "The last four years ... have shown that a political party in Congress acting alone can accomplish nothing."

If the "Democrats want our cooperation, they'll give the president's judicial nominees an up-or-down vote," McConnell said.

Vice President Dick Cheney told the same group Friday that Republicans' loss of Congress in last week's election won't dissuade Bush from continuing to nominate strict-constructionist judges to the federal bench.

"Advise and consent does not mean giving the president a free pass to pack the courts with ideologues from the right or left," Leahy said. "The American people want the Senate to be more than a rubber stamp."

One of the biggest setbacks for the Bush administration in losing the senate is the ability to put nominees on the federal bench. And of course the biggest of them all would be an opening on the Supreme Court.

John Paul Stevens, a reliable liberal vote, is only rumored to be in ill health. But nevertheless a Stevens retirement will trigger pandemonium on capitol hill. Bush will have a chance to switch a liberal vote to a moderate or conservative vote. But getting that nominee through the senate is a lot harder with 51 Democrats. They no longer need to filibuster, they can vote the nominee down outright if they hang together. And most Democrats voting for a Bush nominee will be fragged by their base.