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Here's something you don't see happen every day. Peggy Noonan actually got called out for attempting to repeat one of her favorite talking points -- that President Obama could somehow wave a magic wand and force the members of Congress to behave the way he wants them to -- and on Meet the Press of all places.

GREGORY: And-- and yet this week as-- as this was going on, as the investigation was going on, the Senate defeats a background check bill for-- for guns. So we-- we are confronting this violence but still very divided about how we react to it and try to solve it.

NOONAN: Yeah, I think the essential problem is that Americans at this point don’t trust their government so much to do the right thing. They are skeptical of all bills on things that they care about to-- to lower the conversation a little bit, get it down to-- to mere politics, I guess. I think there is a problem when you’ve got 90 percent of the American people wanting something like background checks and a president who is just re-elected and riding a wave, can’t make anything move that way. I think there is a problem there, and I think he is having, as somebody said, a problem with the levers of power.

KEARNS GOODWIN: But maybe the problem is also the structure of the Senate. You know, at the turn of the 20th century when public sentiment wanted a lot of things done to deal with industrialization and the problem of the slums, the Senate was impossible to move because it was millionaires in there. They finally realized they have to have direct election of senators. They used to be elected by the state legislatures and they’re only susceptible to special interest. Maybe that’s the trouble now, that structural Senate given the 60 votes that are needed, given who they listen to, given the power of special interest, public sentiment cannot penetrate. And we’ve seen it now for the last decade. That’s what the dysfunction is about. It’s not just the Senate, it’s the Congress.

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Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday congratulated Republicans for successfully using a filibuster to temporarily block a president's nominee for secretary of defense -- former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) -- for the first time in the history of the U.S. Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Wednesday said Republicans should feel "shame" for the unprecedented obstruction, but Hannity called the outcome a "major win for the GOP."

"Republicans say it is premature to close the debate over the nominee and say that before that any confirmation vote will take place, they want answers from Hagel and the White House about what exactly President Obama was doing the night of the Benghazi terror attack that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans," Hannity noted on Thursday.

"It's the first time a filibuster of a cabinet nominee has been used," he added. "And needless to say, this marks a major win for the GOP, and pretty embarrassing defeat for the president."

Fox News political analyst Juan Williams pointed out that Hannity "must have missed the news" that "Republicans have basically said that in a week they will vote to end the cloture, end the filibuster and approve Chuck Hagel."

"So, nobody in this town thinks there's any chance that Chuck Hagel, one, is either going to resign or, two, is going to be denied the office of secretary of defense," Williams explained. "What we're really seeing here is a political game."

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As Igor Volsky at Think Progress noted, we'll see how far this goes with Republicans when you've got Senators like John McCain calling equality for gay and lesbian families in immigration reform as a “red herring” and comparing it to tax payer funding for abortion: Harry Reid Predicts Immigration Reform Will Pass, Says It Must Include Protections For Same-Sex Families:

Senate Majority Leader Harry (D-NV) expressed support for including gay and lesbian families in comprehensive immigration reform, during an appearance on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, insisting that they should have the same protections as everyone else.

The United States is home to at least 28,500 same-sex couples in which one partner is a citizen and the other is not, but federal law does not recognize these relationships and prohibits gay and lesbian couples and their children from seeking visas on the basis of same-sex unions. The Obama administration’s framework would allow families to apply for visas on the basis of their permanent unions, while the bipartisan senate principles do not. Reid characterized the GOP resistance to including the equality amendment as an excuse to avoid supporting comprehensive reform: Read on...

Regardless of their rhetoric and Harry Reid's optimism, I won't be surprised if Republicans find an excuse to block the bill, but we shall see.

Full transcript below the fold.

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Rachel Maddow took viewers through the litany of statements made by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid about the need to reform the filibuster rules to prevent the Republican minority from forcing 60 votes on every single bill, but as she noted, what ended up passing this Thursday was nothing that anyone could consider any type of meaningful reform.

About the only issue I'd take with Rachel's reporting on the subject is that I'm not sure if it's fair to lay all of the blame at Reid's feet, or if it's what I believe is a more likely scenario, which is that he'd have gladly signed onto the reforms himself if he thought he had the votes within his own caucus, which he did not. If that is the case, I'd like to know which Senators he was dealing with that refused to go along with stopping the unprecedented obstruction we've seen from the Republicans since Barack Obama was elected president.

And in regard to the failure to pass any new reforms now, as long as Democrats do not control the House, it's not like there is going to be any actual progressive legislation making it through our Congress that Senate Republicans would be blocking. It would make a big difference with nominees and treaties being held up (which I don't want to minimize) to get the rules changed now, but if Democrats were going to reform the filibuster rules, it would have made a real difference when they had control of the House as well and they refused to do it then. I'm disgusted but not shocked that they didn't do anything about it now as well, given their track record.

I've read jokes about the day Al Franken finally got sworn in being the worst day of Harry Reid's life because they couldn't use the Republicans as an excuse any more for not getting anything done in the Senate. I think we're seeing right now that we're not going to have any reforms as long as we've got a bunch of Democrats mucking up the works who are not much better than their counterparts on the right.

Here's more from Ezra Klein on the latest: Harry Reid: “I’m not personally, at this stage, ready to get rid of the 60-vote threshold”:

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Tea party backed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Sunday insisted only Democrats were threatening default on the debt even though he has vowed not to raise the debt ceiling until Congress passes a balanced budget amendment.

"Let me be very clear about this," Cruz told Fox News host John Roberts. "I do not support default on the debt. We should never default on the debt, and the only players on Washington who are threatening default on the debt are President Barack Obama and [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid."

"In any given month, federal tax revenues are approximately 200 billion a month, interest on the debt is 30 to 40 billion dollars a month," the Texas Republican continued. "There is plenty of revenue to service the debt. And any responsible president would have stood at that podium and said, under any circumstance -- whatever happens with the debt ceiling -- we will always pay our debt, we will never default on the debt."

"And the reason the president isn't doing that is he's trying to scare people, he is trying to raise the spectre of a financial apocalypse."

A petition on the Ted Cruz for Senate campaign website calls on Congress to "hold the line" and prevent any debt ceiling increases without a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. constitution.

"I will stand with conservatives across the country in telling Congress not to raise the debt ceiling without a Balanced Budget Amendment," the petition states.

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During part of CNN's god-awful coverage of these ongoing negotiations over the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts and the defense spending sequestration that none of them in Congress like, Your Money host Ali Velshi was co-hosting their live coverage, and he allowed Tenn. Rep. Marsha Blackburn to get away with painting the Democrats as the ones who are being stubborn and unreasonable during these talks, and to lay the blame for no deal being made on the Senate.

She did get some push back from Velshi, but of course it was the sort we see on that network all the time with the false equivalency game, where they're pretending like "both sides" are acting like petulant children for not reaching some deal and painting cuts to Social Security as harmless and a solution to our budget deficits, even though they'll cause a lot of pain for poor seniors and Social Security does not contribute to the deficit.

Velshi asked Blackburn who was at fault for the impasse, after complaining about the markets potentially reacting to the intransigence in Washington, why they were screwing around until the last minute before coming to a deal and Blackburn's response was that the Senate could have prevented this if they'd just passed all of the legislation that the House sent over to Harry Reid's desk. Paperwork! How dare Harry Reid not pick up their paperwork and send it all through?

Never mind the fact that we are supposed to have three co-equal branches of government and that they knew full well they were wasting everyone's time sending bills over they knew had no chance in hell of passing, or that some of them didn't even have support from Republicans in the Senate or that they were at fault for the bills being held up.

Here's more on some of what she cited here: House ‘Reconciliation’ Bill Was Anything But.

Democrats make last-minute stab at tax extenders

Preventing Crushing Defense Cuts

Too his credit, Velshi came back and reminded her that the House couldn't even pass Boehner's "Plan B" debacle that went down in flames just before Christmas. That said, he let her get away again with pretending that herself or the House Republicans have an ounce of interest in bipartisanship or working with anyone and doing anything other than obstructing if they don't get everything they want.

I don't know how many people watch Velshi's show on the weekends, but he's on there every single week, screaming about this impending doom if the Congress fails to work out a deal and then he brings in hacks like Stephen Moore and economists from right wing think tanks to debate about it. Or he's got Norquist on there every time you turn around. You can add him to the list of Villagers who seem intent on painting anyone that doesn't want to inflict some pain on our seniors and the most vulnerable among us as not being Serious, or adults. As Digby noted today: Fiscal cliff notes: The Villagers are stimulated by the prospect of human sacrifice.

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It's getting down to the wire, but President Obama is still pushing Congress to some to some sort of agreement ahead of this so-called "fiscal cliff." After meeting, Obama urges leaders to take 'immediate action' :

President Obama said Friday he was "modestly optimistic that an agreement can be achieved" to avoid the so-called "fiscal cliff," but warned congressional leaders he would demand an "up or down vote" on a Democratic Senate bill if a bipartisan agreement could not be reached in a timely fashion.

"We had a constructive meeting today," Obama said. "Sens. Reid and McConnell are discussing a potential agreement."

The president's remarks came shortly after a meeting with congressional leaders, Vice President Biden and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in the Oval Office.

But the president also warned that if the leaders were unable to strike an agreement, he would push for an up-and-down vote on a proposal that would increase taxes on those making more than $250,000 annually, and extend unemployment insurance.

"If we don't see an agreement between the two leaders in the Senate, I expect a bill to go on the floor ... that makes sure taxes on middle-class families don't go up," Obama said.

The president said he believed such a plan "could pass both houses with bipartisan majorities, as long as these leaders allow it to come to a vote."

Blasting the negotiations as "déjà vu all over again," Obama also chastised congressional leaders for waiting until the last minute to strike a deal. Read on...

Here's more from Greg Sargent: Obama to GOP: Last chance:

Obama is demanding that Mitch McConnell allow a straight up-or-down vote on Harry Reid’s fallback proposal, if the two sides cannot reach a deal. If no deal is reached, Obama is daring McConnell to filibuster a continued tax cut for the middle class and daring Boehner not to hold a vote on it.

A senior Senate Dem aide tells me that the fallback proposal Reid is working on would extend tax cuts on income just up to $250,000, not up to $400,000, as Obama’s most recent compromise proposal did. What this means is that if Senate Republican leaders fail to agree with Senate Dems on a proposal, the fallback plan Reid will offer will essentially rescind Obama’s offer to raise the income threshold to $400,000.

It’s possible, as many commentators are speculating, that today’s machinations mean Reid and McConnell really may reach a deal. But if not, by daring Republicans one last time to refuse to allow simple majority votes on extending the middle class tax cuts, Obama is signaling that if we do go over the cliff, he intends to extract maximum political pain for it.

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It was nice to hear at least one person in Congress talk about the dangers we're facing with these so-called "fiscal cliff" negotiations and that is this moment of panic being used to ram a bad deal through that includes things like cuts to Social Security. Rep. Keith Ellison appeared on Al Sharpton's show on MSNBC and explained why he could not vote for any deal that doesn't protect the working class and our social safety nets and that "if you're talking about cutting Social Security, I'm not with that program."

I'd feel a lot better if I was hearing the same thing from Harry Reid. It might be a good time to remind him not to give away the store to McConnell and Boehner in the next few days.

Update: Here's more from Digby on these negotiations: Fiscal cliff notes 12/28 and she included some additional contact info for Reid:

So Reid and McConnell are supposed to try to work out some deal that will pass both houses and if they don't the president wants an up or down vote on extending the Bush tax cuts for those making less than 250k a year and Unemployment Insurance. He's pretty much daring the GOP to filibuster in the Senate --- and/or Boehner to take the heat for not allowing a vote on middle class tax cuts. [...]

Keep in mind that if Reid and McConnell come up with something, the likely outcome is that Democrats will have to be the majority in both houses to pass the deal. That means most of the Republicans will be allowed to vote against spending cuts and tax increases while most of the Democrats will be expected to vote for spending cuts and tax increases. Despite the fact that the taxes were scheduled to go up anyway, this will be called a Democratic victory. Why, Villagers might even bestow upon them their greatest accolade and call them "grown-ups."

I think the sequester will be taken care of --- nobody's going to allow the defense industry to lose even a penny. Nobody. Either break off the middle class tax cuts now as the president proposes as his fallback plan or let everyone vote for tax cuts after the first and then allow the debt ceiling games to begin. (It's got to happen some time.) I see no reason to capitulate on spending at this point. If that's what it takes, go over the cliff. Why should Democrats become the tax collectors for the austerity state?

If you are of a mind to call Senator Reid's office and leave him a message, you can do so here. (And be sure tell him to keep Kent Conrad and his big "ideas" off the table. Conrad's the lamest of ducks and has no business involving himself at this point.)

Reid's office:
Phone: 202-224-3542 / Fax: 202-224-7327
Toll Free for Nevadans: 1-866-SEN-REID (736-7343) - Restricted to calls originating from area codes 775 and 702

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I expect the talking heads over at Fox to be attacking President Obama during these negotiations on the upcoming "fiscal cliff" or as some have called it, the "fiscal curb," but how bad are things for John Boehner and the House Republicans when even Bill Kristol and Laura Ingraham can't manage to come to your defense? We had an agreement among the panel on Fox News Sunday this week, and they all believe that Republicans refusing to negotiate with President Obama is just going to lead to them getting a worse deal later.

Which is good news as far as a lot progressives are concerned, since Republicans think a good deal is destroying our social safety nets and sadly there are too many Democrats happy to help them chip away at them with this talk of a "grand bargain." It seems a lot of us should be grateful that John Boehner is really bad at his job.

And of course there was no mention of just who is responsible for that debt that has been run up since President Obama has been in office. As we've noted here before on too many occasions to count, most of that deficit was due to Bush's policies.

You're not going to hear anyone say that over at Fox though. Quite the opposite as we saw with how Wallace opened the segment.

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Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) on Sunday said that former Presidential nominee Mitt Romney and other Republicans had made a mistake by trying to change abortion laws and that his party should "leave the issue alone."

During an interview on Fox News, host Chris Wallace noted that the presidential candidate who McCain had actively campaigned for had lost unmarried women by 36 points, Hispanics by 44 points and young people by 23 points.

"I think we have to have a bigger tent, that's no doubt about it," the Arizona Republican admitted. "Obviously, we have to do immigration reform. There is no doubt whatsoever that the demographics are not on our side and we're going to have to give a much more positive agenda. It can't be just being against the Democrats and against Harry Reid and against Obama. You've got to be for things. And we have to give them something like the [1994] Contract with America that we gave them some years ago."

He continued: "And as far as young women are concerned, absolutely, I don't think anybody like me -- I can state my position on abortion, but other than that, leave the issue alone."

"You would allow people to have freedom of choice?" Wallace pressed.

"I would allow people to have those opinions and respect those opinions," McCain replied. "I'm proud of my pro-life position and record. But if someone disagrees with me, I respect your views."