A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

So let us take stock of our spending-like-a-drunken-sailor Congress:

• The Senate has rejected the Coburn amendments. During the course of the debate, Senator Ted Stevens (R. Alaska) threatened to (a) die on the Senate floor; or (b) resign from the Senate; or perhaps (c) resign from the Senate and then promptly die on the floor after having given the resignation speech. Melodramatic, much?
• Meanwhile, Senator Patty Murray (D. Wash.) is threatening people. Charming. The sad thing is that she doesn't even make a good Corleone, but the threat will be effective enough anyway.
• Amazingly enough, the rejection of the Coburn amendments has served to unite the Right (see first link) and the Left into hatred for their respective party's actions and the actions of the party opposite. Which means that the two major American ideologies have actually converged to declare a pox on their own houses and on each other's. If that don't beat all . . .

Someone tell me what the point is of having a Republican Senate that doesn't take the most basic and elementary opportunity to (a) score a political victory by passing amendments offered by one of its own and (b) doing the right thing as far as policy goes. (Maybe it is time for Republican voters to threaten wayward incumbents.) And then tell me what the point is of having a Democratic opposition too dumb to take advantage of the stupidity of the Republican Senate.

Because I would really like to know.