Senate Session: Play it All Night Long

It's REALLY late and the Senators are beginning to tire.

John McCain is slurring his speech a bit but he deserves credit for managing to read from his script and point out areas on a map of Iraq.

He's also responding to a question from Sen. Sessions.

Actually, he's doing quite well.

Maybe McCain does have the stamina to keep his campaign alive. The old man hasn't given up the fight.

It seems that there aren't many senators in the chamber to hear McCain.

WASHINGTON -- So much for forcing Republicans to filibuster all night.

As the clock struck midnight and Tuesday became Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid loosened up a bit on his plans to teach members of the minority that Democrats set the schedule on the debate over Iraq.

Reid made his point with a 41-37 vote to instruct the Senate Sergeant-at-arms to request absent senators to attend Senate proceedings he had promised through the night. More to the point, nobody wanted to be the next Bob Packwood, the Oregon Republican carried feet-first into the chamber under a similar directive in 1988.

Turns out Reid had no intention of enforcing that motion, what with the assortment of senators over 80 who could not be expected to show up through the night for live quorum calls.

Speaking of those mandatory attendance tallies, Reid changed his mind about how many, and when. He had originally planned holding one around 3 a.m. and another at 7 a.m. But that changed during the midnight vote when Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., made the case against senatorial sleep deprivation and impugned Reid to push the quorum call back.

Reid, who had his very own cot waiting for him in a quiet parlor off his office, agreed. Next live quorum call, he announced: 5 a.m. The Senate would vote later in the morning on whether to advance legislation to withdraw troops from Iraq, he added.

For most, that meant bedtime.

Two rows of cots turned one of the Capitol's most ornate rooms into a dorm room. It could not be confirmed how many senators bunked there, but one male was spotted snoozing there just before the midnight vote. A Senate aide who demanded anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information said two more men slumbered there around 2:25 a.m. Members with more seniority also had the option of dozing in their hideaway offices tucked into the Capitol's assorted corners and hallways.

Still others hightailed it to their nearby homes for a few hours of shuteye.

What a joke!

The Dems stage a stupid stunt like this all-night session and they're too weak to follow through on it.

They retreated from their own goofy political game.

The Dems really are a bunch of losers.

On Monday, Harry Reid promised, "We're not going to let everybody go home and have a good night's rest."

Oops! Where did everybody go?

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ


(An Ol' Broad's Ramblings)
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Hillary followed McCain.

She looks awful. She seems fatigued, huffing and puffing like she's been yelling at Bill for hours. She's talking SO slowly, speaking as if English is her second language, droning on and on and on.

Hillary has said, "I don't feel no ways tired."

I don't think she could convincingly say that now.