Wednesday, March 02, 2011
Mister Quorum Call retires!
Senator Akaka of Hawaii has announced he will not run for another term. This will cause a serious change in the sound of the Senate. At least 99% of the Senate's "working" time is spent on fake roll calls, under the pretense of "quorum calls". The "quorum call" is a parliamentary pretense that really amounts to a prolonged coffee break. For decades, the audible signal of a quorum call has been the clerk intoning "Mr Akaka" followed by no other names.
Real (non-coffee) roll calls are much more complicated but equally absurd. The clerk reads the entire list of 100 senators straight through while the Senate mills around and chats. The straight-through list is repeated roughly 415 times before someone finally wakes up and responds. The response is not Yea or Nay, but a sort of alteration in the random Brownian pattern of milling. When each senator finally remembers his party affiliation, he saunters closer to the clerk and signals the clerk that he is voting. The clerk knows which party will vote which way, so he then calls out "Miz Murray. Miz Murray Yes." or "Mr Inhofe. Mr Inhofe No." as the case may be.
Since these non-coffee roll calls only occur after midnight on the last day of the session when the "clock" has been falsely "stopped" to preserve the fiction that the session is still valid, they are much less familiar than the "Mr Akaka" coffee call. ¶ 7:03 PM
Real (non-coffee) roll calls are much more complicated but equally absurd. The clerk reads the entire list of 100 senators straight through while the Senate mills around and chats. The straight-through list is repeated roughly 415 times before someone finally wakes up and responds. The response is not Yea or Nay, but a sort of alteration in the random Brownian pattern of milling. When each senator finally remembers his party affiliation, he saunters closer to the clerk and signals the clerk that he is voting. The clerk knows which party will vote which way, so he then calls out "Miz Murray. Miz Murray Yes." or "Mr Inhofe. Mr Inhofe No." as the case may be.
Since these non-coffee roll calls only occur after midnight on the last day of the session when the "clock" has been falsely "stopped" to preserve the fiction that the session is still valid, they are much less familiar than the "Mr Akaka" coffee call. ¶ 7:03 PM
