they should've covered the clock!

 

"When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."

~ Maya Angelou

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Internet Comment:

~~  Watching from London, 800 billion on defence and people with pots and pans raided your capitol.

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Last week I heard on the news that on Wednesday, January 6th, after the riotous mob was cleared out of the U.S. Capitol and Vice President Mike Pence and the necessary legislators went back in to finish counting and approving the electoral votes--by the time they finished it was 4 in the morning.

     Someone expressed disappointment because they had really wanted to finish the process before midnight so that they could say they finished the job on the day it was supposed to get finished, January 6th.  Like -- to push back against the rather large "interruption" to their work which had been perpetrated.  Like, 'don't let them win.'

     But since it went overnight, it was technically January 7th when they got done.

Hearing this made me remember a custom in the state legislature where I live:  if it's the last day when something has to be passed and it gets toward midnight and they aren't finished debating, amending, etc., they can cover the clock and whenever they finally pass the bill, even if it's after midnight, it still counts as passing it on the original day.

     The clock they cover would be the big, round, ornate clock high on the wall in the legislative chamber.  I don't know how they would get to the clock, come to think of it--maybe go up in the balcony above the clock and drop a jacket or coat down onto it.

One of those "quirks" that got added to the rule-book some year back in the past when they had a deadline to pass something and couldn't get all the work done, and deals made before the stroke of midnight, so somebody got creative.

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