Whad'ya Know?

The Walker Walk

14 Democratic State Senators hightailing it for Rockford’s Clock Tower Resort & Conference Center and CoCo Key Water Resort (the ideal, full-service resort for professional business and family escapes) is news, but it is not, as Republican Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald reckoned, unprecedented, as this short history of errant legislators suggests:

1861— After Unionists are run off, the Missouri rump legislature votes to secede from the Union.
1868—Black legislators in Georgia leave the state capitol after being denied their seats.
1893—Montana Democrats walk out in the midst of a Republican house cleaning which included them.
1914—Bolsheviks and Mensheviks march hand in hand from Russian Duma as it votes to dissolve itself.
1923—40 members of the Arkansas House hit the highway during no holds barred road bill brawl.
1935—30 members of the Georgia assembly go to Church rather than the state house on Sabbath session.
1951—Republican US House members on the Appropriations Committee go off in a snit over their share of the Appropriations.
1958—Kenyans dismayed with slow pace of independence abandon the legislature altogether.
1982—Black Alabama State Representative Alvin Holmes leaves 20 minutes into President Reagan’s speech to the legislature believing other black legislators to behind him. They are not.
1983—During a raucous French language constitutional amendment debate in Ottawa, English-speaking Progressive Conservatives break for extended High Tea.
1986—Republican minority leadership and staff leave the US House “fed up” with Democratic hospitality.
1987—Black South Carolina legislators do not walk out when “Dixie” is scratched from the inaugural lineup.
2000—Aggravated Jewish members of the Knesset can take no more after Arab legislator mentions Israel’s trove of nuclear warheads out loud.
2003—Texas lawmakers famously flee to Ardmore, Oklahoma to prevent being redistricted into nothingness by GOP. Oklahoma Highway Patrol cannot come up with a charge to arrest them on.
2008—Scores of Iraqi pols storm out of the Council of Representatives when jobs for their cousins are not forthcoming.
2011—14 Wisconsin Democratic State Senators evade capitol police and slip over Illinois state line to avoid losing vote on stripping collective bargaining from state workers, forever to be known as the Clocktower 14.

This entry was posted on February 17, 2011 at 7:45 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

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