Cynical Nation

I haven't exactly been "glued to the set" during the entirety of the Alito debate (thank God) but I did make it a point to watch my two senators from New Jersey this afternoon. They're an interesting pair. For one of them, this will be his first vote in the chamber. The other shouldn't even be in the Senate, but that's another story.

Their speeches were essentially identical, however. Is there some kind of law that says every freakin' Democrat in the Senate has to use the phrase "turn back the clock" at least once when talking about judicial nominations? And are the Republicans equally obliged to use the phrase "up or down vote?" Can someone who has seen more of the proceedings than I have confirm this? Can we get new writers?

Anyway, it's now 3:20 PM and we were promised a cloture vote at 4:30, but John Cornyn is currently blathering on and on about some damn thing. Any chance we'll actually be on schedule here?

UPDATE: It seems like the cloture roll call is proceeding more or less on schedule. Servers at Kos and DU are melting down. I can't access either site.

UPDATE: I'm having a bit of trouble following the count through C-SPAN, but I've heard the roll call vote of enough bellwethers to say that cloture should pass easily.