Beldar on the budget deal to keep the government open

In response to the just-announced compromise reached by Congress to keep the federal government open, I have three immediate observations:

1. This is only a start. But there must be a start, and as starts go, given that the GOP only controls the House of Representatives, this is a good one.

2. As I write this, I'm watching Barack Obama on TV with the Washington Monument in the background. Obama's practically claiming that he's going to be meeting tourists there tomorrow morning to punch their entry tickets. It is absolutely delicious to watch this politician brazenly pretend that he — Barack Obama — just done a great and brave thing by agreeing to these tens of billions in budget cuts, when every person in the entire world who's watching this knows he and his party are responsible for the spending orgy this deal begins to reverse. Sometimes, as a lawyer, I'm perfectly happy for a hostile witness to tell a huge, huge whopper while he's in the spotlight — a lie so obvious and dramatic that it settles over the courtroom like the smell from a crate of rotten eggs that's just been hurled to the floor. "Stinky" Obama just did that. You watch, he'll end up eventually trying to take credit for Rep. Paul Ryan's "Path to Prosperity" — Obama intends to run for reelection as a fiscal moderate (again)! But no lie could be more obvious.

3. Politics is sometimes very subtle, but this hasn't been. The causal connection between last November's election and today's budget cuts is as clear as anything in American history — on the same order of obviousness as Lincoln's election and the bombardment of Fort Sumter to start the Civil War.

Good job, Speaker Boehner & Co. I am proud of my party's Congressional leadership, and it's been a while since I've felt that way.