  Walter Shapiro Yahoo News  By Walter Shapiro The topsy-turvy
scene would have been impossible to imagine when George W. Bush
was in the White House. Wednesday night was oozing into Thursday
morning on the Senate floor as Rand Paul’s lone-wolf filibuster
against the president’s drone program had morphed into a larger
Republican crusade. In a symbolic blessing by the GOP
establishment, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (up for
reelection in 2014) had just appeared to affirm his solidarity
with libertarian Paul, a recent foe in Kentucky Republican
politics. Suddenly, liberal Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin, one
of Barack Obama’s closest friends in Congress, was asking Paul
for permission to interrupt his 12-hour filibuster with a
question. (In the Senate, by the way, a question is a speech
with a brief interrogatory at the end). Durbin began his
“question” by spending several minutes emotionally conjuring up
the scene in Washington 11 years ago on Sept. 11. The Illinois
Democrat pulled out all the dramatic stops–t