And just as he or she did on April 17, Sen. Ima Luddite (R-Who Knows Where) voiced opposition. This time the mouthpiece was Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.). "On behalf of the Republican side," he said, "I object." We object to the obstruction.

Honestly, what is the big deal here? Filing campaign finance reports electronically has been standard operating procedure for candidates for the House of Representatives and the White House for years -- as it has been for political parties, political action committees and "527" groups. Yet Senate candidates are still trudging down to the Senate Office of Public Records with paper copies of their reports, which are then passed along to the Federal Election Commission, which sends them to a vendor that punches in the information and zaps it back to the FEC electronically. That finally makes them widely available, sometimes too late for voters to see who's donating to whom and how the money is being spent. With this seeming fear of modernity, it's a wonder the Senate isn't calculating budgets with an abacus. Or is it a fear of disclosure?

Long-standing Senate custom allows the objection of a single senator to stop a bill in its tracks -- it's known as a secret hold. A measure that passed the Senate earlier this year, and awaits a House vote, would eliminate the practice.