Historical Figures at Odds With Pols in Name Game

Civil rights icon Rosa Parks (William Philpott - Reuters)

What's in a name? Politics, it turns out, when Congress gets involved.

The House passed legislation last week to name two buildings at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta after the late civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks and Mother Teresa, who ministered to the penniless.

The move came as something of a surprise, especially because it conflicts with a brief provision tucked into a different bill. That one names the two buildings after Sens. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the lawmakers who are senior on a subcommittee that provides CDC funding.

But naming buildings after senators doesn't exactly stir souls in the House.

Hence, the attempt to keep the names of Harkin and Specter off the structures and memorialize Parks and Mother Teresa, a bill that united normally feuding Republicans and Democrats in the House and passed without controversy.

But the political jousting doesn't stop there.

"I believe this legislation appropriately recognizes two enormously important historical figures," Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), wrote Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). He asked Obama, the only black senator, to lead an effort to "get this historic legislation enacted expeditiously." Obama had sponsored legislation to place a statue of Parks in the Capitol.

Hastert's plea aside, under Senate custom, any member of either party can anonymously block passage of any bill, temporarily at least, by refusing to give consent for its passage.

In this case, someone did, name and party affiliation unknown.

-- Associated Press