So a 71-year-old law-abiding citizen is not allowed to hand-deliver letters about campaign finance reform to members of the House. I can understand requiring the letters to go through some kind of security screening –anthrax, you know — but to not allow him to deliver the letters at all seems, um, un-American.
It hasn’t been that long since a mob of rowdy teabaggers got into the Longworth House Office Building and heckled Democratic congresspersons, in particularly black Democratic congresspersons, and I don’t know that any were so much as briefly detained. Funny how that works.
See also this article by Joan Shipps at Raw Story.
Late Thursday night, the House of Representatives voted in favor of “H.J.Res. 43: Disapproving the action of the District of Columbia Council in approving the Reproductive Health Non-Discrimination Amendment Act of 2014.†If enacted, the legislation would make using employer-based health insurance for in vitro fertilization or birth control pills a fireable offense in Washington, D.C.
That’s bad enough, but in some ways this part is more disturbing:
Thursday’s House floor debate kicked off after 9:00 PM. Before I entered the doors to the House Gallery, I complied with a police request to forfeit all my electronic devices. I inquired if I could get a press pass so I could take pictures. After a few radio calls, officials on the scene told me I could not have a press pass. So I relinquished my phone and proceeded to go in the Gallery anyway.
Before going through my second metal detector since entering the building, a police officer gave my purse a thorough examination. I had already put my purse through an x-ray machine.
When I entered the Gallery, Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) was imploring her Republican colleagues not to use the federal authority vested in them by people from other states to overturn local laws in Washington, D.C.
I sat down near D.C. voting rights activists who were attending the hearing and began to take notes on a steno pad. A congressional staffer came over and informed me I was not allowed to take notes.
 Not allowed to take notes? Maybe C-Span was there, I don’t know. But this is just twisted. Whose House is it, anyway?