Playing Whispers In The Cloakroom

Many years ago, when I was still in high school, the cloakrooms were where all the gossiping happened. Sometimes it was difficult to work out who said what and why as gossip morphed into a form of "Chinese Whispers".

For Republican's on the Hill, nothing's changed since high school. Michael Roston from Raw Story just emailed with news of a remarkable scene played out today at the PurgeGate hearings.

The second half of the hearing on the firing of 8 US Attorneys with D. Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, screeched to a sudden halt today when Republican senators objected that the hearing violated Senate rules.

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, announced that the hearing would need to be frozen while Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) was reading a statement.

"Does that apply to Republicans?" Grassley asked.

"It's the Republicans who want it to stop," Leahy answered.

But the cause of the delay was not clear. A spokeswoman for Senator Arlen Specter, Ranking Republican on the Committee, said the hearing would resume.

"It seems that there was confusion as to why and if there was a hold as it came from the cloakrooms," wrote Courtney Boone, Specter's spokeswoman to RAW STORY. "It will be resuming shortly."

..."Whatever objection there was on the Republican side has been withdrawn," Senator Leahy then explained around 2:37 PM. "I've been here 33 years and I've never seen it happen before," he added, referring to the rules objection.

A phrase springs to mind. It has the words "ass", "both hands" and "map" in it.