Chillibuster: government takes a third snow day!

In this post, meteorologist Jeff Masters has apparently made official the unofficial names of the first two major snowstorms to hit the Mid-Atlantic this winter:

The top 10 snowstorms on record for Washington, D.C.:

1. 28.0", Jan 27-28, 1922
2. 20.5", Feb 11-13, 1899
3. 18.7", Feb 18-19, 1979
4. 17.8" Feb 5-6, 2010 (Snowmageddon)
5. 17.1", Jan 6-8, 1996
6. 16.7", Feb 15-18, 2003
7. 16.6", Feb 11-12, 1983
8. 16.4", Dec 19-20, 2009 (Snowpocalypse)
9. 14.4", Feb 15-16, 1958
10. 14.4", Feb 7, 1936

Now that the third major snowstorm has shut down the federal government for a third straight day, I think it's only fitting that we dub this storm "Chillibuster" in honor of Republicans' efforts to bring government to a grinding halt. Over the past several months they've fibbed, flexed, and filibustered against everything President Obama could possibly want to do to keep the country running. Now they're getting a little help from Mother Nature. It's almost as if Tom Coburn were controlling the weather.

(If you missed the Coburn reference, he was one of the "Class of '94" Republicans who led the 1995 government shutdown against Bill Clinton.)

As Ezra Klein notes:

As we've discussed before, the reason holds and filibusters and cloture calls and all the rest of it is so effective is because the Senate operates amidst a scarcity of time: There's a lot the majority wants to do and not enough time to do it. But this week, the snow is holding up business, giving Republicans a much-needed break from doing it themselves.

But even when the government is shut down, at least Starbucks isn't.

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