Tuesday night was a thriller for fans of parliamentary procedure. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) interrupted Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D-Mass.) floor speech against fellow Sen. Jeff Sessions' (R-Ala.) nomination to be U.S. attorney general, invoking Senate Rule XIX to force Warren to sit down because her reading of a 30-year-old letter by Coretta Scott King "impugned the motives and conduct of our colleague from Alabama." Warren appealed the ruling, suggesting there wasn't a quorum, but lost a party-line vote. Now she is barred from speaking about Sessions on the Senate floor.
But she can, of course, talk about him off the Senate floor. "The Republicans took away my right to read this letter on the floor — so I'm right outside, reading it now," Warren said on Facebook. So far, more than 2 million people have watched the video of a U.S. senator reading a letter making President Trump's attorney general pick look pretty shabby. Well played, Sen. McConnell. Peter Weber
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