The GOP called for the check Wednesday night, having had enough of the fight over an extension of unemployment benefits that the party had held up for several weeks.

While the Senate was stuck in parliamentary limbo, some 200,000 people actively looking for work lost their unemployment benefits. The bill extends unemployment benefits for an additional 14 weeks across the country, and in some states with the highest unemployment the extension goes to 20 weeks. More on the bill here.

The extension itself was not controversial and passed 98-0. Getting there, however, was a Herculean parliamentary task that provides insight into just how hard it is to pass even popular legislation in the Senate with a minority party intent on opposing the majority’s agenda step by laborious step.

Earlier Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called for the third cloture vote on the bill to break a GOP filibuster. It passed 97-1. (That would be one Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) as the lone Republican to object in public on this round.)

via GOP Folds On Unemployment Benefits Fight: 14-Week Extension Passes.

Here is a complete profile on Coakley’s recent work helping protect consumers from predatory lending and financial products by Tim Fernholz at the American Prospect. Some more facts:

• Pro US AG Torture Investigation as it stands
• Career Prosecutor
• Married to a Police Officer
• Firmly Pro Choice
• Pro Gun Control

Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), who has been shut out of the 6 person, non representative health care negotiations on the Senate Finance Committee, doesn’t seem to be happy about the exclusion or the proposals being mulled over by the Baucus/Conrad/Grassley led group:

Rockefeller has sparred privately with Conrad and Baucus during their Democrat-only Finance Committee meetings about what Rockefeller views as a disregard for measures that would make insurance truly affordable to the poor in West Virginia. But when Rockefeller emerged from those meetings, he tended to deliver only cryptic statements to the media.

On Thursday, however, he stopped putting on a polite face. In a warning shot of sorts, he sent letters to the Government Accountability Office, the National Cooperative Business Association and the Agriculture Department, asking dozens of questions about the history, success rate and legal, regulatory and licensure requirements of cooperatives — questions he said he has yet to receive answers from by the committee.

“I don’t think he is very happy with me, and I regret that,” Rockefeller said of Conrad. “I can’t worry about that.”

via Senate Democrats spar over public plan – Carrie Budoff Brown and Patrick O’Connor – POLITICO.com.

3 Democrats, 3 Republicans guiding health care is not what the American public voted for. No solution should be 50/50 bipartisan with the way the country split the senate 60/40. Since true universal health care is off the table and the real conversation is around a public option, the Republicans have gotten as much as they 40% they deserve. The fact that Baucus and Conrad insist on meeting the GOP on their side of the debate, should not only concern the Obama administration going forward but should make democratic senate leadership seriously consider enacting and making permanent Sen. Tom  Harkin’s proposals for choosing new committee leadership at regular intervals and by other criteria in addition to Senator tenure.