Injury to Sam Tomkins before last year's New Zealand Test series gave Zak Hardaker the chance to lay a marker down at full-back, and the Leeds man certainly impressed.
"The point is to lay that marker out there and say this is the preferred path forward," said Representative Steven C. LaTourette, a veteran Republican from Ohio, "and then like so many things, the Senate and the administration are going to have to come up with some way to deal with it.
"For quite a few of us [it] is our last opportunity to lay a marker down and try and get on that plane for New Zealand," he added.
It's not a totally worthless document, because it is meant to lay a marker on the table for what the president is willing to deal on and what he will fight for -- but it is nothing more than political posturing put into words, and shouldn't be seen as anything more at this point.
And so the typical policy among Democrats is to do as little as possible for as long as they can, figuring that if the Republican party never changes its position, they can string along the LGBT community for a long while before they have to lay their marker down and risk the vote of any single voter who opposes gay rights.
But that is no reason not to lay down markers.
Much of the recent maneuvering is simply an effort to lay down markers for the approaching negotiations.
The president was also speaking to European allies and once again trying to lay down markers and exert his will, as he has tried to do on global warming and missile defense, without equivocation.
The stunning result in Scotland, caused by a collapse in the Liberal Democrat vote there and a rudderless Labour campaign, led Salmond to announce he would be holding conversations immediately with Cameron to "lay down markers as to what this result, what this mandate, means in terms of Scotland's relationship with the United Kingdom".
But this also means that Democrats in both houses are facing enormous pressure -- right now -- to lay their markers down, and decide what they can and cannot vote for.
