Wisconsin insanity

A few observations:

• Needless to say, if the Tea Party engaged in such shenanigans we'd never hear the end of it.

• Republicans have been derided by Democrats as the party of no and obstructionists for their opposition in Congress to the Obama administration's agenda. Democrats in Wisconsin, meanwhile, literally left the state to thwart the democratic process and ensure that a vote couldn't take place. Hypocrisy much?

• It's amazing and instructive that while the country faces so many pressing problems, many of them fiscal in nature, that the one issue Democrats are really willing to go the mat on is protecting the privileges of public sector unions. This is what really stirs them to action. To illustrate just how bizarre this is, let us recall that even leftist icon Franklin Roosevelt warned against the unionization of public sector workers:

"Meticulous attention," the president insisted in 1937, "should be paid to the special relations and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government....The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service." The reason? F.D.R. believed that "[a] strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to obstruct the operations of government until their demands are satisfied. Such action looking toward the paralysis of government by those who have sworn to support it is unthinkable and intolerable."

• Chris Christie, you've got competition.

Update: Some surprisingly sensible commentary from Joe Klein.