Ramesh: Theoretically speaking, it would be possible that Congress thought our Libya caper was unwise but that (sort of) defunding it now would be unwise. But I suspect that’s not it. Rather, I think Daniel’s suggestion that the House lost its nerve is more likely to be true.
I’ve quoted this from Gibbon before, but it’s more apt every day given the obsolescence of our own legislature:
The senate of Rome, losing all connection with the Imperial court and the actual constitution, was left a venerable but useless monument of antiquity on the Capitoline hill.