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“The Sergeant at Arms Will Restore Order”
We just finished watching the Senate vote on the Kavanaugh confirmation. It passed, but not without lots of loud, disruptive protesting. It is my understanding that in order to get into the gallery, you need a pass from one of your senators. I assume it is signed or otherwise keyed to the senator.
It seems to me that anyone who is disruptive enough to be removed should have their pass taken and a count kept for which senators had issued the passes. Then, for every one removed, reduce that senator’s quota. Or at least make the list of senators public.
The way it is now, there is no accountability.
Published in Politics
Perhaps rules have changed. I sat in the Senate gallery several years ago and didn’t need a pass from a member of Congress. It was an interesting but dull experience. Al Gore, Jr. was speaking to a nearly empty chamber, blathering on and on about the ozone layer. He progressed from there to blather on and on about global warming and bring ice storms and blizzard wherever he went.
@brianwatt – I don’t know if it changed recently, but I just looked up on https://www.senate.gov/visiting/common/generic/new/watching_congress.htm
I think if you get removed, it should result in a lifetime ban
Long, long ago I visited the Senate and happened to be there for a vote, which required Senators to rush in from their offices for about half an hour to place their vote.
How long ago was this? Well, a particularly red-faced Senator ran past me and my girlfriend in the hall outside the Senate chambers, in a hurry to place his vote: Teddy Kennedy.
I like this idea.
Also good, but conditional on the prior. Some Senators would brag on it if no punishment attached.
Technically, you need to get the pass from a Senator — or rather, from your senator’s office — if you have one. That is, international visitors are allowed to just walk up to a desk, show a passport, and get one. Practically, I do not think they are always strict about this — at least I distinctly recall getting a pass from that desk myself somehow, and I think they gave me extras I didn’t ask for. And they are not necessarily signed.
In any case, it’s not a complicated process. You go to the office and tell them you want passes and they give them to you. I don’t recall whether they even asked for ID. Practically, I think it’s mostly intended to encourage tourists to visit their senator’s offices.
Attempts to tighten the system mostly sound like they’d mostly just complicate things for tourists and cost money at the same time. I don’t remember if they wrote my name down anywhere, but I can’t imagine there is any central list that you could use to “ban” people. I also don’t think we should ban innocent non-political blue-state tourists because their current senators are off the rails.
If people want to protest in this fashion, I’m OK with letting them show the country what they’re up to. It didn’t change anything. So long as security remains very tight and there are a very limited number of people able to be in the galleries at a time anyway, I don’t think it is a real threat to public order.
The Capitol — and especially the galleries — are also a “gun-free zone” (no electronics, either). It’s actually one place where I am fully supportive of having no one but the police be armed.
What could be of some use — require gallery visitors to sign a statement agreeing to abide by the rules of the chamber, and attach steeper consequences to violating those rules. I assume they’re breaking the law in some fashion anyway.
I read that those who were arrested a second time today have to sit in jail until Tuesday because Monday is a holiday. They were arrested on a Saturday.
My guess is that the requirement may have gotten more stringent after 9/11. I visited the Capitol in 1990.
I despise both “my” senators, so I guess I won’t be going any time soon.
Monday’s a holiday?
Columbus Day
You are such a racist. “Indigenous People’s Day.”
@willowspring, we were very upset by all the screeching and screaming and at the risk of upsetting the Language Police (I’m in the process of re-reading 1984, and very much have things like the “Thought Police” on my mind, I guess), the thing which really got our attention was that one of the screechers, who had a most distinctive “screech”, kept coming back for more screeching. We wondered why in the world the Capitol Police didn’t just keep her/he/it out of the Chamber once and for all. Perhaps, however, with all the stories of these people getting paid right in plain view of everyone, maybe they have a “screeching school” somewhere so they can train all these loons to sound just alike when they start yelling.
I fully agree with this observation and further note that even for First Amendment “purists” who would advocate in behalf of the right of these loons to interfere with the orderly functioning of the Nation’s legislative business ( and, yes, I even had to smile at myself after writing that, after the despicable and disgraceful disruption of all rules of comity and civility we saw in the first set of hearings for Justice Kavanaugh, and not just on the part of the “screechers” but, tragically, on the part of our “National Representatives” themselves), there should be a realization that no one can say they are deprived of their opportunity to voice their opinions, loud and clear, all over Capitol Hill.
It’s lucky Chris Dodd wasn’t with him.
We may have to ban visitors during controversial votes. Let them yell at C-SPAN and then go out to scream at the sky.
Honestly, I think that may be the best proposition. Anything else suggested just complicates matters for normal tourists and probably ends up costing money.
I suppose the Capitol police are best able to judge if it is really necessary. I don’t want them put unnecessarily at risk. Otherwise, if people really want to act in this way I don’t see why we should try to hide it. Eventually they all get taken out of the galleries and the votes continue in peace. It clarifies things sometimes.