Whether they’ll cop to it or not, Republicans are currently engaged in a filibuster of Chuck Hagel’s nomination to be Defense secretary.

Jim Inhofe, Oklahoma’s conservative senior senator, has attempted to place a hold on Hagel’s nomination. Lindsey Graham has indicated his willingness to do the same. Generally, such requests are granted as a courtesy by the majority leader, but Harry Reid has opted not to honor them in this case and has gone ahead and filed a cloture motion. Thus, 60 votes will be required for there to be a simple up/down vote on the nomination. As Jonathan Bernstein writes, there is no way to call this anything but a filibuster.

“What a shame,” Reid lamented after filing his motion on Wednesday. “That’s the way it is.”

Reid may simply have been speaking as a White House ally there, but he’s also a Senate institutionalist, one who - to the consternation of many progressives activists - balked at an effort last month to water down the chamber’s filibuster rules. Reid clearly believes in the unique individual prerogatives that the Senate grants its members and is loath to break with tradition and create new procedural rules and precedents - especially if they might come back to bite his party the next time it’s in the minority. From an institutionalist’s standpoint, what’s happening now with the Hagel nomination is very troubling.

Simply put, we’re in uncharted territory. Look at it this way: Hagel is on course to be the first Pentagon nominee and only the third Cabinet nominee ever to face a 60-vote requirement for confirmation. But even that understates it, because the other two - C. William Verity and Dirk Kempthorne - weren’t up against serious filibusters.

More: When Republicans Play With Fire

hosted.ap.org

He gave no speech, issued no call to action. He spoke of changing alongside the nation’s people, not of leading them into uncharted territory. He made sure to say what so many so passionately believe - that states should decide such issues on their own.

A black president speaking out for a minority denied the right to marry is undoubtedly a powerful political moment. But a significant cultural milestone? A nation full of people at ease among openly gay co-workers, relatives and sitcom characters may already have passed Barack Obama by.

It is a truism, but it’s worth saying nonetheless: Politics lags behind culture, especially Hollywood’s version of it.

The president himself describes his change of position on gay marriage as several steps behind his 10- and 13-year-old daughters and the college students he frequently encounters - even young Republicans - who already see treating gays equally as no big deal.

latimes.com

Only 24 weeks into her pregnancy, Haydee Ibarra’s doctors told her that her baby wasn’t getting the blood and oxygen she needed to survive.

If she stayed inside the womb, the baby would certainly die. If she was born, her chances weren’t much better and she could face a lifetime of health complications.

Ibarra, 22, and Yovani Guido, 24, implored the doctors to do everything possible to save their daughter. And they did.

PHOTOS: The third smallest baby on record

On Aug. 30, Melinda Guido was born four months premature at Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center. She weighed just over 9 ounces —the smallest baby ever born in California and the second smallest in the United States.

“It was scary,” Ibarra told reporters Thursday outside the hospital. “Everybody was telling me the same thing: that she wasn’t going to be able to make it, that she was too tiny.”

Melinda is now four pounds, one ounce. But her future is uncertain. And the decision to employ all the technological innovations available to save her life has raised ethical questions no one can answer.

Should doctors intervene with medications, surgeries and heroic efforts to save babies who may face lifelong health problems — if they live at all? And who should make the call, given the large costs that can fall on the public?

“We are in uncharted territory,” said Dr. Rangasamy Ramanathan, chief of the neonatology section at the county hospital. “It’s very difficult to say if this baby is going to be normal.”

More