This is more like it, thank you.

Leaking the emails would be unusual, given the taboo over disclosing personal communications between top staffers. But the missives also would reveal Boehner's position on employer subsidies for congressional staff. Democrats believe the Ohio Republican's decision to attach an amendment to revoke those contributions to the most recent House continuing resolution was a direct shot at vulnerable Senate Democrats up in 2014. Senate Democrats believe that Republican efforts to force a vote on what some in the GOP have characterized as a congressional "exemption" are designed to politically corner Democrats like Kay Hagan of North Carolina or Mark Pryor in Arkansas, who represent more conservative states. Democrats contend that Republicans just want to campaign on the issue,while hoping the amendment will not pass.

This would only be responding in kind. For years, Washington worked on a system of both written and unwritten rules of behavior. One of the marked characteristics of the reign of the morons has been to trash the informal systems of acceptable conduct. Fine. Let's do away with all of them and have an actual brawl over what's at stake.

I also spoke to a leading Democratic congresscritter over the weekend who told me that, very soon, the Democrats in the Senate will start going through the sequester line-by-line, demanding public votes on funding things like medical research and environmental protections, and sticking Republicans with a choice of being for or against curing, say, Alzheimer's Disease or cancer. As someone who thought the sequester not merely stupid but Beltway stupid, I applaud this decision as well. Forcing people into uncomfortable votes works both ways. Making John Boehner cry should be a bipartisan affair.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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