The Internet has helped bring down regimes, elect politicians, and stop lawmaking in its tracks, but until 2014 it has never directly led to legislation.
While the Senate resumes lawmaking only on January 23, it has been holding brief non-legislative "proforma" sessions every three days to try to keep Obama from making recess appointments without its consent.
"I always thought that conservative Republicans believed that 'local control is always best' when it comes to lawmaking.
In our sclerotic lawmaking process, it is not enough that the President, a majority of both Houses of Congress, and a majority of the voters at the last election favor extending health care to all citizens.
They also criticise the "judicial lawmaking" because it applies to the case in hand, concluding that this breaks the non-retroactivity commonly considered part of the rule of law, although it is sometimes necessary.
It shares equal responsibility for lawmaking with the U.S. House of Representatives.
Without getting into detail again on this particularly nasty piece of legislation, it's worth considering the general process of lawmaking that we seem to have fallen into.
It is, at minimum, a useful reminder of what lawmaking looked like back in the days when the two parties made deals and we complained that nobody was sticking to their principles.
Most never rise to that post, but while their names might not make it into the state history books, they do become proficient at lawmaking.
