THE LOW POST: Tasting Their Own Medicine

"You know what the closed rule means. It means no discussion, no amendments. That is profoundly undemocratic."

The Republicans then swept into power on Newt Gingrich's coattails, pledging to usher in a new era of openness. "Instead of having seventy percent closed rules," then-new Rules chairman Gerald Solomon said in 1994, "we are going to have seventy percent open and unrestricted rules."

Except it didn't work out that way. Particularly in the Bush years, under the direction of sartorial Jedi-master David Dreier -- a very mean man who wears very nice ties -- the number of open rules dwindled down literally to nothing. That's not a joke -- in the first session of the 109th Congress, there were, for the first time in congressional history, no open rules. And guess who was sitting next to Dreier the whole time as the number two guy in the Rules Committee? Lincoln Diaz-Balart.

I've spent a good deal of time in the Rules Committee in the past few years and I watched that cocksucker sit there with a gloating, cat-who-has-just-eaten-mouse smile as the likes of Jim McGovern, Louise Slaughter and Alcee Hastings begged, literally begged to have this or that amendment allowed (or "made in order," as they say in Congress) so that it could be voted on by the whole Congress. Since Dreier for the most part couldn't be bothered to show up at the committee hearings, it was usually Diaz-Balart who sat in the chairman's chair and chided the Democrats or their witnesses to shut the fuck up.

And it was Diaz-Balart who at the end of the afternoon would gently stack his papers and disappear behind the majority office door so that the bills could be bastardized, clipped and/or rewritten in the middle of the night. In the 108th Congress, for instance, 78 of the 191 rules were reported after 8:00 p.m., and 21 of those were reported at 7:00 a.m. the next day. It was during those years that Rules earned the nickname "Vampire" or "Dracula" congress -- bills would go in reading one way, then come out at 7:00 the next morning with completely different meanings. In 2001, for instance, a health insurance bill reworked in the middle of the night went to the floor with a few minor changes that drastically limited the liability of HMOs who denied coverage to patients. This kind of shit was commonplace back when Diaz-Balart and his buddies were running things.

Now this guy is standing up in Congress and blasting the Democrats for exactly the same thing. "Yeah, it's kind of like one of those prison converts to Jesus," a guy I know in Congress said. "You just don't know how to take it."