Quote of the day: And then all of this happened

It turns out that what has held together American government is less the elaborate rules hammered out by the guys in the wigs in 1789 than a series of social norms that have begun to disintegrate. Senate filibusters were supposed to be rare, until they became routine. They weren’t supposed to be applied to judicial nominations, then they were. The Senate majority would never dream of changing the rules to limit the filibuster; the minority party would never plan to withhold all support from the president even before he took office; it would never threaten to default on the debt to extort concessions from the president. And then all of this happened.

- Jonathan Chait, taking time out from his many other responsibilities to personally depress the living daylights out of me.

Chait's New Yorker piece from which this is excerpted is going on the p3 Reading List, at right.