When the Dems eked out control of the Senate in November, I knew it would be hard for them to govern with such a slim majority. And yet my heart was light. Heading the list of my reasons to celebrate was this simple phrase:

Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy.

I have not always agreed with Leahy’s votes, but he is a man for his times. We have an executive branch with an almost fetishistic obsession with testing the boundaries of its constitutional powers. We need somebody on that dais with enough piss and vinegar to pick a fight and keep fighting it. This is not a time for exemplary displays of typical Senate comity.

Here in Pennsylvania we are represented by the previous Judiciary Chair, Arlen “All-Bark-No-Bite” Specter. What a contrast.

From the AP wire story on the $463.5B spending bill, set to hit the floor today:

Rep. Jerry Lewis (news, bio, voting record) of California, the Appropriations Committee’s top Republican — displaced as chairman last fall — ripped into the Democrats for rushing the bill to the House floor “without any prior debate whatsoever and without the opportunity to offer even one amendment on the floor.”

Wait a second…why are the Democrats rushing this bill through now? Oh, yeah, that’s because House Republicans didn’t pass their omnibus spending bill by the closing gavel of the 109th congress.

The 109th Congress is packing its bags for good and leaving town today without enacting nine of the 11 appropriations bills that pay for the federal government. It’s a development that has infuriated Democrats, who will have to carry the additional burden of enacting the spending bills when they take control in January, and has left Republicans red-faced.

“They’re going to leave a mess as they go out,” Democratic House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco said Thursday. “It’s really sad. The Republicans never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”

“It’s a spectacular disorder of chaos,” said Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., who will chair the House Appropriations Committee in the 110th Congress. “We will have to run a cleanup brigade.”

My message to every Republican legislator who doesn’t like some earmark that got frozen or cut, stick your amendment in your pipe and smoke it.

I’ll try anything.

According to The American National Election Studies, only 28% of the electorate correctly indentified the Republicans as controlling the House of Representatives in 2002. Even in more typical years, around half of the electorate doesn’t answer the question correctly.

Chris at MyDD is pitching the idea of making this THE talking point of the election messaging, ad nauseum. “Do you disapprove of the way the congress is doing its job? Republicans control congress.”

I’d certainly prefer to win the contest of ideas. but first we have to clear the hurdle of basic identification. In a period where we control neither the executive or legislative branch, we ought not to get between voters and the full and ample expression of their displeasure.