It Never Entered My Mind

A lot is being made of the AP photo showing some Dem legislators in the Connecticut House playing solitaire (and another catching a baseball update) while the local Republican leader talks about the budget. Tom Foley and Chris Dodd have gone so far as to demand a rule banning laptops and BlackBerrys during formal House and Senate sessions.

Okay, it's rude, but these people had already made up their minds. Democrats control the legislature, but there'd been a lot of resistance to the budget and a lengthy stand-off. They were having a late session and a long debate to finally resolve things, and most of them just wanted to raise taxes, not cut spending much, and get out of there. It's not as if things would have been different if they'd been listening to what the Republican was saying.

I remember going to court to argue motions. You had to sit and wait your turn, and there was nothing more boring. Some people would bring things to read, and if the bailiff saw you doing it, he'd tell you to put it away--something about respect for the court. I thought that was dumb. I can guarantee if we'd had BlackBerrys then we'd have used them, too.

These legislative sessions are for show. Votes are decided elsewhere. Fuddy duddies (or fuddy duddys?--had the same trouble with the plural of BlackBerry) like Foley and Dodd may object to the appearance of inattention, but really what bothers them is their fellow politicians getting caught. I say let them play.