At eight o'clock on Monday evening the Alliance for Justice, a left-wing interest group, ran a 90-second advertisement in which Harry Reid, the Senate's Democratic minority leader, informed the country that "a crisis is unfolding here in the Capitol." Yet even as the celluloid Mr Reid warned of a crisis the real Mr Reid was celebrating a peace deal. Two hours earlier, 14 senators—seven from each party-had managed to cobble together an agreement that stopped the Republicans "going nuclear" and banning judicial filibusters. Just as the Senate's copious supply of flunkies were bringing the cots into the chamber for an all-night debate and journalists were putting the finishing touches to their editorials on the decline of the Senate, the magnificent 14 stepped into the breach, defying (or deserting) each party's generals just as they were about to go into battle.
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