I missed the first week of House Ag's markup of the farm bill, what with the old laptop going phut, and battling Vista on the new one.

But - there's every indication that the bill's progress through Congress will be a thoroughly educational experience.

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In anticipation of the new Congress, I kinda-sorta adopted the motion to recommit as my pet parliamentary maneuver, to see what use the GOP would make of it.

The answer (work the tag) has been, a good deal.

Now, it seems, the Dems are proposing to eliminate the right of the minority to offer a MTR.

(Or, at least, that's what Boehner and friends say they're going to do.)

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Try the tag, and you'll see evidence frin before the 110th got going of a certain obsession with the motion to recommit as the GOP's secret weapon; and, afterwards, a sense of disappointment that nothing much was being done with it.

I'd had in mind Boehner providing Doggie treats to tempt enough of them to join GOP reps in passing one or two of these motions.

(And thus amend the bills in question in ways Nancy would hate.)

But, according to the Timestomorrow, the GOP have been using the MTR for a rather different purpose: providing copy for their propaganda machine for use against vulnerable Dem reps in 08:

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This was the dog that didn't bark in House floor proceedings on HR 1591 last week.

As I've described in earlier pieces, the MTR is a device which allows the opponents of a bill (usually the minority) to amend it just before it receives its passage vote.

(Where the bill has been taken under a closed rule, as HR 1591 was, the MTR will be the only chance the opponents will have to amend the bill.)

Yet no MTR was made.

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About time!

I mentioned on Wednesday that several MTRs had passed - mostly provisions that repeated others in the bill, or which were already law.

Just grandstanding.

But, with the MTR on HR 1433, the GOP actually scored a substantive (if temporary) victory: the MTR proposed would have lifted the gun ban in DC.

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