broader context, i want to quote from an op-ed piece in "the wall street journal" today written by david rifkin and lee casey, two lawyers whose work i have long admired, and here's what they say, to take us back and perhaps remind us that we fill these seats for a short period of time. we act within a system created by our framers and we do our best. rifkin and casey write today -- "the debt ceiling crisis has prompted predictable media laments about how partisan and dysfunctional our political system has become, but if the process leading to the current deal was a spectacle and a three-ring circus, as someone put it, the show's impressarios are none other than james madison and alexander hamilton. our messily political system is working exactly the way our founders intended it to." then i go toward the end of their op-ed piece. "the key point has been made" -- excuse me. let me start a paragraph ahead. "rarely in our system do the participants, whether in the white house, senate or house, achieve all or even most of their goals in a single political battle. but the key point has been made, fe