Today the House adjourned for the Presidents' Day weekend without addressing the FISA question. This means that the odious Protect America Act will expire tomorrow without a more permanent bill having been signed into law. They did this in spite of outrageous and repeated fearmongering from both House Republicans and the President.

In addition, the House finally passed contempt citations against former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and former White House chief of staff Josh Bolton, after a delay by the leadership of seven months. The bill passed today actually includes two resolutions bundled together in a way that would minimize Republicans' ability to foul up the process. One bill sent contempt citations to the Department of Justice, and the other authorized the House to take the DoJ to court if it fails to act upon the citations (which it almost certainly will).

That's not to say Republicans let all this go quietly. Between the contempt citations and the surprising unwillingness of the House Democrats to capitulate on the FISA bill, they threw one hell of a hissy fit. I was home sick from work today, so I was actually watching the action on CSPAN. I got to see Republicans first interrupt the memorial service for the recently deceased Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA12) with a motion to adjourn, forcing members to leave the service early in order to vote (despite a prior agreement that there would be no votes held during the service). Then there was some debate which was spent by Republicans whining that FISA wasn't being addressed followed by another motion to adjourn. Finally, the House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH8) actually led a walkout by House Repubilcans. They all left the floor for the contempt vote in protest that the "critically important" FISA bill wasn't being dealt with, and so the resolution ultimately passed by a vote of 223-32-1. Needless to say, Republicans quickly returned to the floor to vote on the presumably critically important issue of recognizing the achievements of African American scientists, engineers and mathematicians. Glad to know they're so concerned about protecting us.

-David Kleppinger, Morons.org Legislative Analyst