The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank on the restraint and decorum displayed yesterday in the “World’s Greatest Deliberative Body”:

The Senate chaplain started yesterday’s judicial showdown with a prayer for “patience and peace” and “unity where there is division.” Thirty-three minutes later, the majority leader just about accused the minority of attempted murder.

The Republican leader, Bill Frist (Tenn.), was asked why he, the head of the anti-filibuster movement, had voted to uphold the filibuster of a judge in 2000. Frist at first stammered — “Mr. President, the, in response, the Paez nomination, we’ll come back and discuss it” — and then settled on an answer: “It’s not the cloture votes, per se,” he said, using the term for filibuster-breaking votes. “It’s the partisan leadership-led use of cloture to kill, to defeat, to assassinate these nominees.”

The Democratic whip, Richard J. Durbin (Ill.), later walked into the chamber with a transcript of Frist’s accusation. “Those words should be taken from the record,” he demanded. They were not.

…One can only imagine how the Founders would have viewed yesterday’s events. While Frist spoke of killers, Kennedy spoke of “tyranny” and Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) spoke of “dictatorship.” Republicans displayed a large portrait of Owen in the chamber that made it look as though she were a missing person. And Reid, in his excitement, briefly accused the vice president of a dalliance. Dick Cheney is a “great paramour” of virtue, Reid said, before correcting himself to say “paragon.”

Classy.