In their attempt to block any action during the lame duck session of Congress, Sens. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Jim DeMint (R-SC) have callously resorted to questioning Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) faith for potentially keeping Congress in session through the start of the new Congress next year. Kyl has accused Reid of “disrespecting” Christians, while DeMint said it’s “sacrilegious.”

Several notable leaders of the Christian faith community have already slammed the two senators for using Christmas as an excuse to halt efforts to pass the New START Treaty. Today, several other faith leaders chimed in to condemn the senators’ remarks, noting that delaying a vote on the DREAM Act would also be antithetical to the teachings of Christ and the spirit of Christmas.

Pastor Troy Jackson of the University Christian Church of Ohio told me that he “didn’t realize our elected officials had Christmas break like elementary and high school kids do”:

The DREAM Act would be a great way to honor or celebrate Jesus for Christians. I’m shocked that anyone would think that leaving town or leaving that great bill on the table would somehow be ‘honoring’ of Jesus or would even say that voting it would be sacrilegious.

Today, Conservatives for Comprehensive Immigration Reform hosted a call featuring conservative leaders from diverse Evangelical denominations. I got the chance to ask the speakers on the call to respond to Kyl and DeMint’s remarks. Rev. Jerry Dykstra, Executive Director of the Christian Reformed Church in North America stated:

Jesus, who was a high respecter of the Sabbath — which was not simply a national or religious holiday, but was their day of complete rest in his own culture — said that on the Sabbath we need to do what is right. If doing what is right means that we have to work through a Christmas holiday, then by all means we work through a Christmas holiday. [...] I think that’s a manuevering that’s really in appropriate.

Dr. Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel and Dean if Liberty University School of Law dismissed the senators’ comments entirely:

I’m not sure that I would think that that kind of a comment actually deserves a legitimate answer. The fact of the matter is no one is asking somebody to work on Christmas Day. But if you’re asked to work a couple of additional days — they are servants of the public. I just don’t think such a comment has much merit.

Listen:

Reid has also fired back at Kyl and DeMint, saying, “I don’t need to hear the sanctimonious lectures of Senators Kyl and DeMint to remind me of what Christmas means.”

Debate has started on New START and Republican Senators are offering amendments to the treaty. Senate rules allow the Senate to amend a treaty, but this is dumb. In reality, a treaty cannot be amended. All efforts to amend the text of the treaty are therefore poison pill amendments offered to kill the treaty.

The Senate has NEVER amended the text of any previous arms control treaty. Republican complaints that they need more time so that they can offer amendments to the treaty are not serious. They are efforts either kill the treaty or string out the process to delay action on other items.

The reason this is the case is because amending a treaty would require going back to the other negotiating parties and reopening negotiations. The other party is unlikely just to make a concession, but will ask for something in exchange. This threatens to completely unravel the previous negotiations and the treaty. Amending the START treaty therefore threatens to reopen and therefore unravel months and months of painstakingly balanced negotiations with the Russians. If the Senate amends the treaty, such that it requires reopening negotiations with Russia, than the Russian Duma would likely do exactly the same thing and would offer amendments that the US would perceive as against our interests.

In this vein, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and John Barrasso (R-WY) want to amend the preamble of the treaty, which says there is a connection between offensive and defensive systems. This preamble is like saying water is wet. Henry Kissinger called the preamble to the treaty a “truism” and it provides no constraints on anything. As Senator John Kerry pointed out today in the floor debate, this would kill the treaty, because it would require renegotiating the treaty.

Watch it:

Fortunately, all amendments that are offered can be voted down by a majority vote and will therefore all be defeated. This just makes offering amendments a colossal waste of time, which for Republicans is the entire point. At the end of the day, the treaty that is voted on will be exactly the same treaty that has been in front of the Senate for the past nine months.

As the White House releases its review of the strategy in Afghanistan, claiming “progress” has been made and that a July troop withdrawal is on track, Americans appear increasingly impatient with the decade-long war. A new ABC News-Washington Post poll finds that a record 60 percent of Americans now think the war has “not been worth fighting” — a more than 20-point increase since President Obama’s election two years ago. As the Post notes, it’s “a grim assessment,” and the war in Afghanistan is now as unpopular as the Iraq war was under the Bush administration:

Negative views of the war for the first time are at the level of those recorded for the war in Iraq, whose unpopularity dragged George W. Bush to historic lows in approval across his second term. On average from 2005 through 2009, 60 percent called that war not worth fighting, the same number who say so about Afghanistan now.

Meanwhile, a new NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll shows that while Americans want Obama’s primary focus to be on the economy, their second priority is to bring the troops home from Afghanistan — more than reducing the deficit:

Despite the American peoples’ growing displeasure with the longest war in American history, conservative leaders have already been preparing to delay or scuttle the Obama administration’s plan to begin withdrawing troops in July of next year, much as they resisted pulling out of Iraq. Earlier this month, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) suggested he wants to have a permanent U.S. military presence in the country, saying on CNN, “I think it would really secure the gains we made to have a U.S. presence in Afghanistan, two air bases that would be beneficial…as a way to make sure this country never goes back into the hands of the Taliban.”

Earlier this year, Sen. Jon McCain (R-AZ) threw every argument he could against setting a withdrawal date in Afghanistan, saying it was “ill-advised,” that it was a “purely a political decision,” and that it would show weakness. And when RNC Chairman Michael Steele slipped up earlier this year and suggested the war may be unwinnable, conservative pundits and lawmakers pounced on Steele for daring to step out of line.

Republicans have turned the greatest deliberative body into a forum for a non-stop game of chicken. START has been no different. But what seems different about START is that Republicans appear to be swerving.

On Tuesday, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) appeared to throw the hammer down on the START treaty when he said he would do everything he could to make it fail. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) followed up with a threat to force a reading of the treaty. But the White House and Democrats in the Senate led by Harry Reid (D-NV) and John Kerry (D-MA) refused to swerve. Kerry said it was time to “fish or cut bait.” Vice President Biden sent a strong signal saying they weren’t backing down, according to Josh Rogin, Biden said that:

We’d rather lose [the vote on New START] now with the crowd that’s done the work on rather than go back and start from scratch [next session].

All of this indicates that the administration and Senate Democrats are willing to call the bluff of Senate Republicans on START, since they know many, if not most Republicans, do not actually want to vote against the treaty.

Yesterday was therefore a test of whether Senator Kyl could hold his caucus together and he failed. Nine Republicans – the magic number necessary to ratify the treaty – voted for the motion to proceed. Jonathan Weisman of the Wall Street Jornal spoke to two different GOP aides yesterday. A Senate GOP leadership aide told Weisman that ratification was “very likely” and that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s decision to allow debate “went a long way” toward satisfying Republicans. A second aide told Weisman that,

The strong vote today to proceed fundamentally changes the dynamic. It’s pretty clear this treaty is going to pass.

Additionally, in the face of a blistering critique from White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and Senator Reid, Senator Jim DeMint caved and abandoned his effort to force the senate to read the entire treaty. While Reid did make a concession to put off the official debate until this morning – something that Republicans trumpeted as a concession – the fact is that a number of Senators used the afternoon and evening session to issue their lengthy opening statements on the START treaty, something they would have done anyway. So the amount of time that debate was delayed was far less than Republicans claim.

While this was just a procedural vote, the fact is that the final vote is likely to grow, not shrink. Senators Bob Corker and Johnny Isakson both voted for the treaty in committee, but didn’t vote for the motion to proceed. Corker yesterday evening said on the floor:

It’s my hope – I think I have indicated a willingness to support the treaty… I think this treaty with the t’s crossed and I’s dotted, with the appropriate time allotted, whether this is now or ends up being in February, and if the resolution is not weakened in any way, is still something that I would plan to support.

Watch it:

Satisfying Corker’s concerns should not be a problem whatsoever, since time will be allowed to offer amendments, modernization funding – which includes a massive pork give away to Tennessee – is set, and the resolution of ratification will not be changed from the one that passed the committee. This also applies to Senator Isakson as well.