As it happened, the hot microphone mess was the least of the president’s troubles. The gaffe was still in the news when oral arguments over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act began at the Supreme Court. The first day of proceedings concerned whether the Court could rule on the law at all since the individual mandate will not be enforced until 2014. But even those arguments went poorly for the administration and its hapless solicitor general, Donald Verrilli Jr., who was unable to explain how the mandate could be a “penalty” one day and a “tax” the next day…

As a possible anti-Obamacare majority was forming inside the Supreme Court chambers, the magnitude of this week’s Democratic rout was becoming apparent across First Street. Senate Democrats had hoped to spend the last few days before Easter Recess reminding Americans that Republicans are the protectors of those horrible, greedy oil companies. To that end Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, and Dick Durbin had Bob Menendez introduce a bill eliminating tax breaks for carbon energy producers and replacing them with tax breaks for green energy companies. The Democratic leadership had expected the Republican caucus to block debate on the Menendez proposal, handing liberals and the White House a tactical victory.

This is your Democratic-controlled Senate at work: No budget in three years but plenty of votes to score partisan points. What the oaf from Nevada had not anticipated, however, was that Republican leader Mitch McConnell would allow debate on the bill, thereby providing the Senate GOP an opening to blame Obama’s anti-drilling policies for high gas prices. The Menendez proposal went down in the end as expected, but not before Republicans turned the tables on Democrats.