Kicking off the 112th Congress with a lil Un-Constitutional Hanky-Panky!

[Clio the Leo]

House GOP Scrambles To Clean Up Sessions' Mess
Evan McMorris-Santoro | January 7, 2011, 9:47AM

House Republican leaders will be busy today constructing the parliamentary Rube Goldberg device they'll need to briefly turn back the House clock after Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) and Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick (R-PA) skipped Wednesday's official swearing-in ceremony, rendering everything they did between the moment the Republicans officially took over and yesterday afternoon unconstitutional.

Roll Call reports that House Rules Committee chair David Dreier (R-CA) is planning to nullify those votes via a rule in the procedures his committee is writing for the health care repeal process, the first major vote of the new Congress which is expected to come next week.

Basically, Drier's proposed scheme would allow Sessions' votes and other actions in the Rules Committee, of which he is a member, and Fitzpatrick's actions on the floor (including the reading of the Constitution yesterday) to be made Constitutional by a full vote of the House, which of course is now controlled by the Republicans. (The Democrats could have allowed the Sessions mess to be cleaned up by a unanimous consent decree, rendering all that the pair did before being sworn in Thursday to count retroactively, but Politico reports the Democrats weren't interested in playing ball.)

Session's failure to be sworn in properly the first time led to speculation that the repeal effort, a crown jewel of the new majority's agenda, might be delayed. Drier's solution to the problem apparently puts those fears to rest.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/01/house-gop-scrambles-to-clean-up-sessions-mess.php

[Tippy]

1. K&R......

[NYC Liberal]

2. Remember when Bush signed a bill that only passed one House?

Republicans only pay lip service to that "god damn piece of paper."