House Democratic leaders had gathered in the Cannon Caucus room to discuss wide-ranging and symbolic changes to the House rules, including a complete gift ban and new restrictions on travel, earmarks and legislative procedures when activists, including Cindy Sheehan, drove lawmakers from the microphones.
If the rules are adopted after the full House votes on them today, lawmakers' ability to accept junkets from lobbyists will be curtailed, they will have to attach their names to earmarks and spending and tax deductions, credits, exclusions or preferences directed to 10 or fewer beneficiaries will be banned. The proposals also include measures to give the ethics committee power to pre-approve privately funded trips and require lawmakers to report more quickly the costs of the trips.
But when Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) stepped up to pronounce that Democrats fundamentally would "change the relationship between lawmakers and legislators," Sheehan and her allies started shouting, "De-escalate, investigate, bring our troops home now!"
Emanuel's aides said he was willing to talk to Sheehan and her cohorts, but he and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) and incoming Rules Committee Chairman Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) headed inside the Cannon Caucus room when it appeared the shouting would not stop....
And in a related item, there's this guy commenting on the recent U.S. elections:
...None of you has a mandate for anything. Not one. Had each elected position on last week's ballot carried an option marked "leave this job vacant for the entire term," a much larger number of you now would be seeking new employment than you possibly can imagine.
Very few of you actually are wanted in your position. You newly elected are there simply because we wanted to deliver a message to all of you, not because you somehow are better in our eyes. Those of you heading out the door are leaving for the same reason. Make no mistake about this fact and get over yourselves. Are you listening, incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi? Get over yourself and do it now. Our patience with Congressional hubris and incompetence has grown exceedingly thin.
Here's the message: We are fed up with your bullshit. Let me repeat that in words of one syllable for those of you unaccustomed to listening to your constituents: We are fed up with your bull shit. Admit it - you know the truth when you hear it and this is truth at its simplest and most fundamental level.
This has nothing to do with being Democrat or Republican. Neither do conservative nor liberal values figure into the equation. You are not blameless simply because Bush has proven so frightfully bad at being President. After all, you made possible every single thing that he has done. You were our trump card - our safety net - and you let us down!
Above all, we are sick to death of being the World's bad guys! We want America once again to be at the forefront of the good guys. We don't need or want to run the world.
You have proven yourselves incapable of running small nations that America bombs back into the Stone Age on behalf of foreign interests. You thereby have proven our own inability to select decent leadership for ourselves. Why, you have proven incapable of putting your own political party houses in order! Your individual records of corruption, fiscal mismanagement and sexual misbehavior defy description and thus demonstrate your inability, even, to run your own lives. It is folly to think you capable of running the lives of others, let alone entire nations of people and, least of all, the rest of us.
We are through with tolerating the death of our children in foreign lands for the benefit of special interests, particularly those foreign to America. End that stupid war and do it NOW. Get our sons and daughters back home in time for the holidays. Make no mistake about our resolve in this regard, incidentally.