The Democrats had a tenuous hold on the State Senate majority anyway, so it's only a small shock that they were toppled from leadership, in a traditional sense.

Now, there's a sort of power-sharing agreement where Democratic Senator Pedro Espada serves as president pro tempore and Republican Senator Dean Skelos is majority leader - the post he held before Democrats took over as the majority party in January.

How exactly this all works seems uncertain to a lot of observers - as does the fate of issues like same-sex marriage and mayoral control of New York City schools. The New York Daily News' Elizabeth Benjamin had a telling line in a blog post this morning: "Since it's Tuesday, it's lobby day in Albany. Lots of special interest groups are here, but it's unclear who, exactly, they're supposed to lobby - at least on the Senate side."

Anyway, shortly after the coup, the new coalition -I guess they aren't a traditional majority, right? - passed some new rules. They include provisions to make staff budget and member-item allocations for the majority and minority more equitable.

Why didn't they do that while they were in the majority for some 40 years? Why wait until now? And for that matter, why didn't Democrats do this? After all, many of them promised they would during elections.