Another spectacular display of Democrats caving to special interests.

A bipartisan, majority vote of 56 in favor of tightening subsidy limits on the biggest, wealthiest farms in the country was not enough to ensure passage this morning.

That's because parliamentary sabotage engineered by Democrats in favor of the subsidy lobby required a super majority vote of 60 for the Dorgan-Grassley payment "limit" amendment to prevail. As a result, this Congress will perpetuate the current, unlimited taxpayer handouts to big rice and cotton farms. Sen. Amy Klobuchar's tightening of means-testing will walk into the same Democratic procedural trap later today.

And in arranging the defeat of these two amendments, Democrats not only kept subsidies flowing unfettered to giant farms. They also prevented the savings these amendments would have generated from being invested in food stamps, conservation, organic agriculture and other chronically underfunded programs.

We will be providing detailed responses to this pathetic performance in days, months, and years ahead.

Next up: the Senate will provide an unprecedented subsidy to crop farmers--corn in particular but all other major field crops by extension--by mandating an outrageous increase in the amount of ethanol everyone in America will be forced to put in their gas tanks. That will keep crop prices high for years--and then we'll load subsidies right on top.

Now that's something Senate Democrats will have no trouble making happen.