Notebook

Some scenes from the extraordinary rump session held by Democrats on the House floor late Saturday:

With a mischievous grin, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Vic Fazio of California crept up to the high-backed chair of Speaker Newt Gingrich and propped a large poster there. It was a newspaper front page featuring a large caricature of Gingrich in diapers, with the headline, “CRY BABY.” The poster had been banned from the floor earlier in the week.

The rump session infuriated Republicans.

Republican Rep. Bill Thomas of California, chairman of the committee that controls internal workings of the House, strode over to the Democratic side as the rump session began. “How many want the restaurant to stay open?” he asked. When a few Democrats raised their hands, he wheeled around and snapped, “Okay, we’ll close it.”

Later, when a House employee turned on the microphones in the chamber, Thomas burst into an adjacent lobby and said, “He’s out of a job!”

After several speakers had addressed the group without benefit of microphones, Rep. Harold Ford, D-Tenn., crept up to the control panel in the House gallery and figured out how to switch the sound system back on, winning cheers from his colleagues on the floor.

But after word of what he had done filtered back to Republicans, who were meeting elsewhere on Capitol Hill, House officials advised the Democrats to make Ford leave the control board.

Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a veteran of civil rights wars, delivered a rousing message. “I stood up to Bull Connor in Birmingham,” he said, pacing up and down the aisle. “I stood up to Sheriff Clark in Selma. I stood up to George Wallace in Alabama. And I’m not about to run from Newt Gingrich.” Democrats cheered.

Rep. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said Republicans “are so frightened of freedom of expression that today they turned off the microphones. But they haven’t silenced us. Today this Democratic Party is finding its footing.”