Hilarious article by Thomas Burton in the WSJ today - Skipping Town: Tried-and-True Tactical Trick .
I don't think it was intended to be hilarious, but it was hilarious to me. Seems Abraham Lincoln, while a member of the IL legislature, once climbed out of a window and fled to avoid a scheduled vote.
And remember Bob Packwood? He was hunted down and carried back into the Senate building feet-first by plainclothes cops when he -- along with the rest of the Senate Republicans -- fled the coop to avoid having to vote on campaign finance reform. (Oh, the irony.) But don't blame Packwood, it wasn't his idea -- he was just following in the footsteps of the glorious Republican heroes who did the same thing back in 1942 to prevent a vote on civil rights.
And Wisconsin legislators have been taking similar actions to block quorums for at least 118 years now, since the first recorded incident, which was done for the purpose of avoiding a vote on whether to pipe WI water to the Chicago World's Fair.
None of this, of course, will dissuade today's Republicans from huffing and puffing as though the WI Senate Dems are the most loathsome creatures ever elected to any public office just because they did the same thing other legislators have been doing since the founding of this country (yep -- some state legislators took off to avoid quorums when the Constitution was being voted on).
Because, as we all know, IOKIYAR. And if you're not, it ain't. No matter what "it" is.