U.S. House of Representatives

Roll Call advances the story today with a piece on how Boehner “has been working behind the scenes to address the issue for at least the past year and a half.”

What is “the issue”? According to Boehner, the problem is the appearance of impropriety. And Roll Call names names:

Several Republican lobbyists said the Terry incident is part of a larger concern involving a group of House Republicans and lobbyists, including Glenn LeMunyon of the LeMunyon Group, who regularly party with female lobbyists.

“On the Hill, there’s a lot of older men that just go home when they’re done with votes,” said the longtime Capitol Hill Club member who overheard Terry’s remark. “Then you have a smaller group that likes to knock back a few and have a good time.”

Among them are GOP Reps. Bill Shuster (Pa.), Sam Graves (Mo.), Chris Lee (N.Y.) and Duncan Hunter (Calif.), several sources have confirmed. None of the Members have been accused of any improprieties.

Being a congressman is like being in college, basically — you’re far from home with no parents, and a lot of free time — so obviously members enjoy going out and getting drunk and “hooking up,” like the kids do.

But is the scandal that these guys are partying with — and maybe even kissing! — attractive women lobbyists, or that the only people members of Congress ever see socially while in Washington are paid representatives of various terrible and destructive industries? I mean, Boehner doesn’t want it to look like the GOP is physically in bed with lobbyists, but that didn’t stop him from inviting lobbyists to craft the GOP’s future governing agenda.

Thankfully, as befits such a momentous and serious piece of legislation, the House has been debating the measure basically all day.

The Republican sponsor of a resolution reaffirming that “In God We Trust” is the national motto of the U.S. said his legislation is needed because President Obama and other public officials often forget that this is the country’s motto.

“Unfortunately, there are a number of public officials who forget what the national motto is, whether intentionally or unintentionally,” Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.) said in late Tuesday afternoon debate in the House. “There are those who become confused as to whether or not it can still be placed on our buildings, whether it can be placed in our school classrooms.

Hm, yes, a very good point, lots of people do forget that “In God We Trust” is our national motto. That’s more true than ever these days, when “handling money” has become an increasingly rare occurrence for millions of Americans.

This whole Hill article is an absolutely perfect piece of writing, possibly the best humor writing of the year.

The only Democrat who spoke — the one, sole Democrat who bothered to point out what the House of Representatives was spending its time on today — was Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y. (“Nadler stressed that the national motto is not under attack, and said the resolution appears to be an attempt by Republicans to look more religious that others.”)

Foiled again! But let’s see how these quick-thinking Republicans deal with the liberal plot to force children to take “Winter Vacations” from school this year!

The president had called Boehner to congratulate him on passing those pointless trade agreements. But Boehner wanted to talk about how Obama had accused the GOP of not having a jobs plan. That won’t fly with hard-charging House Speaker John Boehner! According to Boehner’s summary of how cool and in control he was on the phone, Boehner had no time for these congratulations. “I want to make sure you have all the facts,” Boehner said, according to Boehner:

“The speaker told the president that when he sent his jobs plan to the Hill, Republicans pledged to give it consideration, and have done so,” the release stated. “The president was reminded of a memo written by GOP leaders outlining the specific areas where they believe common ground can be found. The Speaker also noted that a number of the president’s ideas have already been acted on in the House, including a veterans hiring bill, trade agreements, and a three percent withholding bill approved by the Ways & Means Committee today that will be considered on the House floor this month.”

According to Boehner’s account of the call, Boehner then put on sunglasses and got on a motorcycle. Also he was smoking the whole time, coolly. Then Boehner continued not holding votes on anything important while Eric Cantor repeatedly and blatantly undermined him to the press and the most conservative members of their caucus.

The Republicans in the House are likely to pass a continuing resolution keeping government running for the time being that includes $3.7 billion in offset funding for disaster aid. The Senate’s measure contained $6.9 billion. The latest news is that Rep. Louise Slaughter failed to get the Democratic proposal into the resolution, making it likely that either the House will fail the pass the resolution (many Republicans don’t support it because it doesn’t cut enough spending), increasing the risk of shutdown, or the Senate will stay in session next week and pass it with more disaster aid, forcing it back to the House, where it could fail again.

This is a great way to fund a government, right?

I imagine that the GOP is betting that obstructionism and a potential shutdown will be blamed on “Congress,” generically, and they have learned that they can absorb that hatred and turn it into voter cynicism that leads to increased support for conservatives who hate the government. Reid and the Democrats, meanwhile, will probably cave at the last second to avoid a shutdown. And everyone will say, “oh dear, what is wrong with Washington,” and the answer to that question will remain “Eric Cantor.”

UPDATE: Well, the other problem is “John Boehner,” who is just very bad at his job. The continuing resolution failed 195-230, with Democrats holding out due to the FEMA funding mess and dozens of Republicans voting no because Boehner has no control over them.

Spakovsky suspects imminent voter fraud because some people listed on the registration rolls have moved or died:

A source within the Turner camp tells me the campaign sent a letter and campaign literature to all the voters on the permanent list maintained by the Board of Elections who are automatically mailed absentee ballots. They have received hundreds of pieces of returned mail marked “address unknown” or “return to sender” and at least five marked “deceased.”

ACORN!!!

“Voter fraud,” as Matthew Vadum recently explained, is a phony threat hyped by Republican operatives in order to whip up support for rules making it more difficult for poor people, minorities, and other traditional Democratic constituencies to vote. There’s the lowbrow form of “voter fraud” trolling — screeching conspiratorial nonsense about ACORN — and there’s the highbrow kind, practiced most expertly by former Justice Department attorney and Federal Election Commission member Hans A. von Spakovsky.

In classic George W. Bush administration form, von Spakovsky was a Civil Rights division lawyer who hated enforcing civil rights laws and an FEC advisor who hated election laws. His sole, driving concern was doing everything in his power to help the Republican party. Now von Spakovsky, a prime mover behind the politicization of Bush’s Justice Department, spends much of his time accusing the Obama administration of politicizing the Justice Department.

In all his years of attempting to prove that poor people voting too many times is a widespread problem, von Spakovsky has never managed to find any example of documented vote fraud (as opposed to “registration fraud,” which doesn’t actually affect elections) that happened more recently than 1982.

Concerns about “voter fraud” are a fig leaf for anti-democratic restrictions on voting by undesirable populations. If the Democrat does win tomorrow, Republicans have already invented a conspiracy theory explaining why.

Many people had clearly almost forgotten that the anniversary was almost at hand, and those who remembered were obviously unsure whether or not our elected officials support the troops and hate terrorists. Now we have our answer.

The resolution reasserts the House’s commitment to “opposing violent extremism arrayed against American interests and to providing the United States military, intelligence and law enforcement communities with the resources and support to do so effectively and safely.”

Good. That’s cleared up. The House does not support violent extremism. And it turns out that it’s really easy to just decide to hold votes on things, and then vote for them? Who knew.

The Senate did not have a 9/11 vote today, though, presumably because Richard Shelby won’t do anything until he gets another billion dollar earmark for a defense contractor.