In a surprise move, unemployment benefits bill advances to discussion phase in the Senate

Greg Sargent: A small but surprising step forward for unemployment benefits

Chris Cillizza: The Senate's shocker on unemployment insurance - and why it might not matter much

Meredith Shiner: High Jobless Rates Drive GOP Backers of Unemployment Benefits

Jonathan Cohn: An Unemployment Benefits Extension? Here's the Sticking Point

Brad Plumer: Congress is debating unemployment benefits. Here are seven things they should know.

After Senate vote, Obama urges GOP to extend jobless benefits

President Obama: Nobody wants unemployment checks more than a job

Obama: Unemployed aren't 'lazy,' they just need a little help

Chait: How Democrats Can Force Repubs to Help the Unemployed

Brian Beutler: GOP's moral conundrum on unemployment - Time to call their bluff!

Racism, Sexism, And The 50-Year Campaign To Undermine The War On Poverty

House GOP leaders forced to coach rank-and-file on how to discuss unemployment

Josh Barro: The Problem With The Republican Anti-Poverty Agenda? It Doesn't Exist.

Danny Vinik: Here's Why The Republican Party Doesn't Have An Anti-Poverty Agenda

Greg Sargent: Republicans debate whether to have any kind of poverty agenda at all

House Speaker Boehner Reiterates Republican Demand That UI Extension Needs To Be Paid For

John Cassidy: The G.O.P. Is Still Holding the Economy's Victims Hostage

President Obama hits House GOP on opposition to unemployment insurance

Thomas Edsall: Bridging the Republican's Compassion Gap

While most of America continued to freeze on Tuesday, the U.S. Senate saw a small but measurable political thaw on the issue of extending unemployment insurance for over a million Americans.

As Greg Sargent noted, Tuesday's Senate vote was a small but surprising step forward but there's still a very long way to go. Chris Cillizza agreed with Sargent: Six Republicans voting to join with Democrats in moving the bill forward was a shocker, even if the vote was only to allow the Senate to debate the bill, and wasn't a vote over the actual bill itself.

Still, considering the Republicans in this Congress, we'll take almost any action even resembling good governing practices. Suggestions by some of the more extreme Republican members of Congress, to some of their own constituents who still can't find a job after a long and fruitless search, have effectively boiled down to "go find a set of rafters and an ugly tie."

Some Republicans in the House have become so detached from the concerns of the millions of suffering, unemployed Americans who want jobs, that their own Republican House leadership had to send out a memo this week coaching GOP House members on how to talk - and how NOT to talk - about unemployment. Still, that memo is small progress.

Greg Sargent also noted another sign of progress on Tuesday that a growing number of Republicans in Congress seem to be softening their approach to the unemployed with a more realistic and less disgusting position than "go hang"...

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