Leahy and that sleezy tactic of saying some Republicans have indicated to him privately that they don't want to vote for Brown.
Don't they know that Leaky can't keep a secret?
then he woke up
Yeah, and now he is saying that Brown shouldn't be confirmed because Boxer and Feinstein say so :-).
And of course the democrats are all free to vote anyway they like. That's why twice now since the deal, democrats who weren't part of the deal have voted for cloture when they previously did not (in Brown's case, if you changed the 7 democrat dealmaker votes to what they voted LAST time on cloture, and added the three additional votes for cloture, you would have CLOTURE without the DEAL).
And Owens had 81 votes for cloture.
Oddly, none of the republicans who previously voted against cloture changed their votes when the deal made it meaningless which way they voted. I guess the republicans actually were voting their PRINCIPLES all along.