"NO SHOW" Fall-out

The Harriet non-appearance caused quite a stir yesterday.

A veritable verbal fireworks show.


I happened to tune in on a C-Span re-air of the House Judiciary sub-committee chaired by Rep. Linda Sanchez, and minority chair is Rep. Chris Cannon,

Cannon decided to launch a multiple fusilade of what he perceives as failures of the committee using his privilege of opening statement by ranking minority representative position he holds.

This set the stage for what followed.

Normally mellow Mel Watt, laid reality bare and Cannon fired back demanding that Watt's words be " taken down" - calling them unparliamentary. (Watt delineated what precipitated his current views, citing all the misinformation and hyping the president had performed in order to secure the Iraq resolution and thus the war powers.) The phrase "taken down" has censurious meaning and proscribed procedural processes in the esoteric rules of committee function. This caused much back and forthing and Cannon subsequently kept demanding roll call votes on various chair moves in order for each committee members vote to appear in the record. The chair eventually ruled that the words by Watt were not unparliamentary. Of course this only fueled further ill feelings. IMO it boils down to the fact that the Republicans do not want to "own" what they have wrought.

The hearing finally got around to deciding to appeal to the courts for a contempt citation is my understanding of the next step -- Cannon was explosive and derisive to the end.

Staff members were busily whispering in the ears of Conyers, Watt, Sanchez, Cannon, Frank, et al as legal and procedural matters were getting so rapid fire.

Maybe there should be an award for the most dramatic Congressional hearing of the session. Perhaps I would nominate this one but there is more to come, so maybe not.

At this link for C-span you too can watch this:

http://www.c-span.org/homepage.asp


graysmoke