Bush's Bill Suffers a Torturous Day in Committee

But Feeney was just warming up. "There is not an American mom that is guaranteed eight hours of sleep every night. There are very few people in the business world . . . who are guaranteed eight hours of sleep." Further, he added: "There are suggestions that playing loud music is inhumane treatment. . . . The bottom line is, that means virtually every teenager I know is torturing mom and dad."

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) appealed for reason: "Although I'm sure parents do feel tortured by their teenagers, I don't think that's in the Constitution."

Nadler raised the ante. "Sleep deprivation [for] eight hours? How about 40 hours?" he asked. "How about waterboarding? How about holding people and subjecting them to hypothermia?"

"Absurd! Absurd!" heckled Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.), who accused the Democrats of "hyperbole."

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) seconded the "absurd" accusation. "We are facing sleep deprivation here in this Congress at the shutdown of every single session," he cracked.

Then again, the quality of the debate didn't really matter. The committee's votes yesterday were determined less by argument than by attrition.

With one Republican member out of town, two other Republicans siding with the Democrats and two more occupied at another hearing, the majority party was in the minority. Democrats had an early chance to replace the Bush legislation with McCain's anti-torture proposal -- but that plan lost when two Florida Democrats, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Robert Wexler, missed the vote because they were at a news conference next door on Medicare.

An hour later, it was the GOP's turn to have truancy problems. Missing Reps. Henry Hyde (Ill.) and Elton Gallegly (Calif.), the Republicans watched the Bush legislation go down to defeat -- forcing Sensenbrenner to devote two hours of parliamentary maneuvering to reverse the outcome.

Democrats tried to cement their victory with a motion to adjourn. When that failed, they walked out of the room to deny Sensenbrenner a quorum, but the chairman fought off that challenge, too. Finally, after Sensenbrenner managed to herd enough Republicans into the room, he held a series of four votes to undo the Bush proposal's defeat, overruling all Democrats' objections.

"Point of order!"

"The point of order is not well taken," Sensenbrenner replied.

"I suggest the absence of a quorum!"

"The chair rules that to be dilatory," the chairman answered.

The same could have been said of much of the debate.