WASHINGTON, D.C. – The floor of the U.S. Senate had to be briefly evacuated today when the Christian Bible that was being used to swear in the hundred senators who will be jurors in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump exploded into a mass of flaming debris.

“You could feel that it was starting to get a little hot when the Democrats swore that they’d be able to treat the allegations against President Trump with impartiality, but when the Republicans began swearing they’d consider only the Constitution and the law, the amount of smoke coming from the Bible made it very difficult to breathe,” said Bryce Langdon, now eyebrowless senate page.

“Then Mitch McConnell reached his hand towards it and whomph, it went up like kindling.”

While the spontaneous combustion of Bibles and other holy books is a fairly common occurrence in all branches of the U.S. government, this one was specially made of a space-age, non-combustible material in an effort to ensure it would survive today’s impeachment swearing in.

“The government has been using Bibles lined with asbestos since Andrew Jackson was sworn in to office. But I’ve never seen a flame-retardant Bible go up like that. I estimate that Bible reached almost 2000 degrees centigrade, a temperature that would melt titanium,” said Dr. Henry Lee, a material scientist at Georgetown University. “This Bible should’ve been able to survive re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere with nothing more than a slight singe, but it just wasn’t robust enough to survive U.S. politics.”

Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, who’d been administering the swearing in, escaped the conflagration with minor burns and an overwhelming sense of emptiness at the core of his being.