Reply #9: Look, holds are routed through majority and minority leaders.

[Kagemusha]

There is no way that Reid and McConnell don't know who's doing a hold if it's a senator from their party, they just aren't saying because this is a collegiality thing, a Senate thing.

As for Senate rules, there's the Senate parliamentarian who can be asked his opinion and then Cheney can do some evil with the cooperation of a majority of senators - that's how 'the nuclear option' was going to work. The Senate rules are not secret. There can be no "hidden clauses" with the Senate. Obscure clauses, yes. Hidden processes, secret holds, yes. But never, ever secret rules.

And if you think there are secret rules, Reid must be fully complicit in the matter. I may not hold Reid in as high regard as some, but I regard the idea that he is complicit in secret Senate rules allowing a non-Senator to place secret holds on pieces of legislation to be so abhorrent to the constitutional power of the Senate that only a Senator with the absolute lowest respect for the institution he sits in could possibly even conceive of such a move. It's only about 5000x easier for Cheney to find a sympathizing Republican senator to do the dirty work for him. And I may be underestimating slightly in that.

Your reference to the US attorney issue is flippant, oversimplified and unhelpful.

And no, I do not have a list of historical examples. I'm not a professional Senate historian. What I relate to you, I recall from the debates over "the nuclear option" a short two years ago, and on the simple blunt fact that if Cheney did have the power you suggest, it would be... how to put this gently... an extra-constitutional horror that would completely nullify the Senate's existence as a legislative chamber separate from the executive branch. The Senate would not be a part of a co-equal branch of government anymore. It'd be like letting Bush table and call votes on his own money bills in the House. It doesn't happen, it will not happen short of an abolition of the Republic, it's just unconscionable that the leaders of the Senate, of either party, would allow it, because it reduces their own personal importance in the Republic to that of pack mules.

If you haven't heard, Senators have rather large egoes so no, they wouldn't allow it.