Legislative shenanigans

What do you do if you're voting on a bit of legislation and you're down 200-220 as the buzzer goes off? If you're the House Republicans, you abuse your leadership of that chamber, and give yourself as much extra time as you need to twist ten arms really hard.

In a vote to block the portion of the USA PATRIOT Act (it's an acronym, folks) that allows the government to access your library records without probable cause, the Republicans kept the vote open 23 additional minutes after the normal 15-minute time limit for a roll call vote had expired, not closing the voting until the House leadership was able to persuade ten Republicans to change their votes to defeat the measure.

As Republican C.L. Butch Otter, who was a sponsor of the legislation (one of the good guys) put it after the vote, "You win some, and some get stolen."

As the NY Times article points out, this is not the first time the House leadership has pulled this trick. Sad.

The New York Times > National > Republican-Led House Defeats Effort to Curb Patriot Act