Hope your 26th is/was a good one.

Everybody else: hope you had a good day too.

Two thoughts about today’s closed-door session in the Senate.

One, doesn’t the idea that the full Senate can meet in secret seem odd? I find any session of Congress that’s closed off from the public it (supposedly) serves to be troubling, save perhaps for the Intelligence Committee. Yet Rule 21 says that any Senator can move for a closed session and all it takes is a second. Strange.

Two, check out this photo:

This Getty Images shot (by Mark Wilson, taken from an MSNBC article) of Harry Reid fascinates me. First, check out the lighting. That’s not a fill flash, it’s probably television camera lighting. Notice how it feathers nicely on the edges, making Reid almost glow. Next look at the angle. Wilson must have crouched down and shot upwards, which would make it all the more unlikely that he could get eye contact with the Senator — but he nailed that too. The touch that really makes it, though, is the ceiling. We’re looking up at a glowing senator who has… a halo.

I wonder if Reid will save us.

Fun trivia bit: in the 1980s, when then-A.G. Edwin Meese released a report on pornography, photographers at the event immediately dove to the ground, eager to get the bared breast of the famous Lady Justice statue in the frame.