Senate grinds to halt

The bad feelings between the party floor leaders in the U.S. Senate is dragging business to a halt, according to the Washington Post.

“The Senate went three months this spring without voting on a single legislative amendment, the nitty-gritty kind of work usually at the heart of congressional lawmaking,” the Post reported on July 20. “So few bills have been approved this year, and so little else has gotten done, that many senators say they are spending most of their time on insignificant and unrewarding work. … Senators say that they increasingly feel like pawns caught between Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), whose deep personal and political antagonisms have almost immobilized the Senate.”

The newspaper quoted Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island: “It's pretty bad, and I don't think there's any way to fix it.”

Illustrating the story was a photo McConnell and Reid standing next to each other, both frowning while saying the Pledge of Allegiance.

In McConnell's home state, The Courier-Journal in Louisville recycled the Post story but went another way on the photo, using a shot of the two men seated side by side and smiling big like best friends.