The Meter -- Below the Fold

Man, twelve-hour days suck. You don't know where you are for a while, but you do know that you shouldn't be at work. Ugh.

Anyways: it was too big a day to go through and hand out marks for the usual suspects. Nancy Pelosi? Yay. Harry Reid? Yay. Robert Byrd? Yay--and drink all the Red Bull you can get your mitts on. [Hat tip, again, to Wonkette.] Haters, like the folks at RedState, who still think that red-baiting is funny? Boo. So let's go off the board, with something incredibly boring--yet telling!

David Dreier: 3. He used to be king of the sandbox--chairman of the Rules Committee, gatekeeper for every single piece of litigation that went through the House. Now? The dude (R-Cal.) is not happy.

Thing is that he's got a beef, to a point. H.Res. 6, the package of House rules that was debated today (and will be tomorrow) includes a provision that fast-tracks four bills, moving them around the normal committee process and blocking amendments. The bills: implementing the 9/11 commission recommendations, raising the minimum wage, promoting embyronic stem cell research, and allowing negotation for lower prescription drug prices--all part of the Longest 100 Hours.

Now: Democrats, in the minority, cried foul whenever the GOP pulled stuff like this--dropping bills with only an hour's notice, not allowing amendments on the floor, and so on. And it looks like the Dems are now doing the same thing they decried.

Still, it came across, from Mr. Dreier's lips, as a plainitive whine. And there is a part that rings hollow from his words, as he was the gatekeeper for a Congress widely regarded as one of the worst, in terms of actually getting stuff done, and also for blocking attempts at Dems at getting clean (in their eyes, of course) bills to the floor for an up-or-down vote. Now the Dems are stepping on the gas, and Dreier's screaming bloody murder. It all seems so unconvincing, to me.

Boil it down, and it just sounds like Dreier's pissed that he doesn't run the show now. Understandable--but I'm not going to put the sackcloth on just yet, if you don't mind.