The excuse/reason is that Senate leadership wanted a vote lickedy split so that they could pass the bill before some numbskull could offer an amendment to ruin the fabulous, historic, bold, courageous vote on CAFE standards (see every previous post). So they voted, and the Senate Energy Bill passed.

Now, we turn our attention to the House, where if we play our cards not only right but hard and relentlessly we could get the good stuff -- the global warming and land and water protections we desperately need -- into the House version That's one of the things that's agonizing about this work. What we really want to be doing today is jumping up and down and hugging and drinking over the CAFE win. Is it HUGE. But instead we're wringing our hands about how the bill lacks other things that are very important to us.

Many people -- including the grumpy but excellent Wall Street Journal energy reporter John Fialka -- say that the problem with us environmentalists is that we "make the perfect the enemy of the good." Not only that, but it seems that wins and losses happen to us simultaneously, so that we're forced to be thrilled about one thing at the same moment that we'e bitterly disappointed about something else. We want to have a clear message. But how can you be clear when you're basically schizophrenic?