Whiny-ass babies

A heartfelt plea for bipartisanship:

Thirty-one-year-old Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) is not a large man, standing perhaps 5 feet 3 inches tall in thick soles. But he packed a whole lot of chutzpah when he walked into the House TV gallery yesterday to demand that the new Democratic majority give the new Republican minority all the rights that Republicans had denied Democrats for years.

"The bill we offer today, the minority bill of rights, is crafted based on the exact text that then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi submitted in 2004 to then-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert," declared McHenry, with 10 Republican colleagues arrayed around him. "We're submitting this minority bill of rights, which will ensure that all sides are protected, that fairness and openness is in fact granted by the new majority."

Omitted from McHenry's plea for fairness was the fact that the GOP had ignored Pelosi's 2004 request -- while routinely engaging in the procedural maneuvers that her plan would have corrected. Was the gentleman from North Carolina asking Democrats to do as he says, not as he did?

Hmmm. For the last decade or so the Republican congress have acted as if it is going to be in the majority forever. Tradition was cast aside, bridges were burnt, common decency disregarded when it comes to letting the Democratic minority have a say. They acted like bullies, and now they suddenly discovered the virtues of sharing and cooperation as soon as the Dems take over congress?

Reading the rest of Milbank's article is highly recommended. One part that did annoy me was what I initially thought was Milbank needing to bring in balance by making a big deal of Cindy Sheehan heckling Rahm Emanuel elsewhere in the same day. Why should it be relevant? However, I'm not in the States and thus I don't really know how the media coverage went there. If the Sheehan stuff did hog the coverage at the expense of the Dems being able to expose a Republican hypocrisy, then yes, it was unfortunate worthy of mention.

I've written nice stuff about Sheehan when she first came on the scene, and I've bit my tongue since then when I though her actions had been politically counterproductive/embarrassing. She lost her son in Iraq, for god's sake, and I did not want to add to the pile of misogynistic, ugly, putrid character assassinations piled upon her from the right with anything else that is negative. But really. Now I cannot help but feel so frustrated by her actions I can just scream.

What Sheehan needs to realize that though she differs with the Democrats on the fine points of extracting ourselves from Iraq, we are essentially on the same side. When she undermines the Democrats on national television, she is cutting the legs from under her own campaign. If she went on the talk shows and said what she had to say, fine. But she had to do so in a way that made a spectacle of herself.