FLAIT

When the stimulus bill was coming up for a vote in the Senate last month, the Democrats needed 60 votes to break a filibuster. However, they were one vote short because Democratic Sen. Sherwood Brown was back in Ohio at his mother's wake. So the Senate kept the vote open for five hours so he can fly to Washington and cast his vote. He flew right back for the funeral which was the following morning.

Would it have been so terrible for one Republican - just one - to change his or her vote so Brown could stay where he was? The bill was going to pass anyway - Brown was coming back to make sure it did. The least the G.O.P. could have done was save him the trip. But they didn't.

Maybe I'm being too hard on Republicans. Since Congress defies all logic and common sense in the way it operates, and is tangled up in extremely complicated, contradictory and arcane rules, maybe no one thought of it. But if that's the case then we're in serious trouble because if Congress is that structured, that obtuse, that inflexible and that illogical, how will they ever "think" of the ideas that will be necessary to solve the economy, health care, energy, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and everything else? Doesn't inspire confidence.

Congressional rigidness aside, a Republican should have saved Brown the trip. But not one did. Quite a "compassionate" party they got there, huh?

Note: Had the roles been reversed, had the G.O.P. been in the majority and they were trying to get an important stimulus package through, or any legislation for that matter, and not one Democrat changed his vote to save a Republican from a trip he never should have had to make, they'd be wrong too. But the Democrats wouldn't have done it out of stupidity because they wouldn't have even thought of it.

Republicans are different. Even if they thought of it, they still wouldn't have done it because that's exactly what Republicans are.