Class

Today the House voted to hold former Bush administration officials Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten in contempt for failing to cooperate in the inquiry about the fired federal prosecutors. As you can imagine, House Republicans were none too happy about this and have spent most of their day throwing up minor procedural barriers- small measures and votes about nothing- to try and stop the contempt vote from taking place. And this worked for a lot of today- let's face it, if anybody knows how to stop a vote, it's the Republicans. They're artists in that regard. Anyway, once they had exhausted all of those asinine dalliances and still couldn't manage to stop the vote, they took all their marbles and went home by staging a walkout and boycotting the vote. The contempt resolution passed 223-32.

That Congress is bickering like schoolchildren should come as a surprise to no one. So why bring it up? Because one of the Republican's stupid little procedural votes was brought to the floor IN THE MIDDLE OF REP. TOM LANTOS' MEMORIAL SERVICE. Yep, you heard that right.

Tom Lantos was a 14-term veteran of the House of Representatives and the only Holocaust survivor to ever serve in Congress. The Hungarian-born Lantos actually escaped the Nazis twice and was reunited after the war with his childhood sweetheart, Annette. Both of them lost most of their families in the Holocaust. They were married in 1950. In his 14 terms in the House, he was one of the co-founders of the Congressional Human Rights Caucas and eventually rose to be the Chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee.

Earlier today, in the middle of his Memorial Service in jam-packed Statuary Hall, the bells in the Capital started ringing, signaling House members that a floor vote was taking place. House Members had to run to their chambers.

What were they voting on? A resolution to adjourn for the day, introduced by Republican Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart. The funny part? It didn't pass. Actually- they didn't even vote on it. The roll call turned out to be for nothing.

The House Republicans today interrupted a fellow Congressman's Memorial Service for petty, pointless partisan childishness. I don't know how many people who read this blog vote Republican, but for those that do, I have a question- If the House Republicans have that little respect for the memory of one of their own colleagues, how much respect do you really think they have for you?