Everyone is talking today about the craziness of yesterday’s closed-door Senate session in which the Dems cornered the Reps (is that how you’d shorten it???)  with tantrums about the Iraq war inquiries. Nashville is Talking is a great place to find lots of discussion on the playground fight, with much more thought and detail than I can give you. However, I found this post on Mark Rose’s blog particularly helpful in sorting out the details and getting down to the core of the issue.

I first heard about this brouhaha this morning on Good Morning America (yes I admit I rather avoid the news in the evening; I want to relax in the evenings, not get over-stressed by the constant hyperbole, melodrama and overacting of most news programs today). The news came complete with sound bites of the two top bawlers — Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (the perp) and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (the alleged vic) — crying about how the other guys had done them wrong.

At first I was angry at the whole thing — mostly at the Dems for pulling such a stunt. But after I got over the initial shock (which took all of about 10 seconds), I found the whole thing oddly refreshing. They were mad. Both parties were mad. So mad that they couldn’t keep their political masks of "bless their hearts" in place to save their lives.

For the first time we actually heard what the two parties truly feel, truly believe, instead of a bunch of political posturing and over-the-top disingenuous graciousness toward the other party. For the first time, we heard a bunch of grown ups act like the playground kindergartner-bullies they are, so mad they dropped all pretense of "trying to get along" and yelled at each other in genuine, and strong, emotion and conviction.

"Your not playing the way we told you to!"

"Your mean! I’m gonna tell the American people!"

"You don’t play the way we want you to! And you better shape up. WE are the party that tells the American public what’s what!"

"You don’t either! And we’re gonna tell! We can’t trust you!"

"We’re gonna make you play the way we want to. So there!"

"Your mean! And we won’t trust you any more!" (as if they ever did)

On and on it went. But at least this time, it was real emotion, real conviction. We heard what the parties really think of each other up there in Washington.

Good thing we have gun control laws. Can you imagine what the Senate floor would look like right now if we didn’t? Hmmmmm….. on second thought, maybe we should lift those laws just for the Senate; just for now. Let them fight it out like "real" men. Maybe they’ll all kill each other off and we can start fresh with two new parties…

Naw, we’d still end up with the same problem. Corrupt kindergartner-bullies fighting each other for control of the playground.

The big losers yesterday were us, the American people.