On a party vote Tuesday, the Missouri Senate Rules Committee sent a resolution to the full Senate urging Attorney General Chris Koster to join their frivolous lawsuit declaring health care reform unconstitutional. The hearing was meant to be quick and dirty, with no public input, just getting the thing out of committee, so that Republican senators can paint their faces white and do a little kabuki on the Senate floor.

Unfortunately for the bill’s sponsor, Corpublican Jane Cunningham, the bleeding hearts got wind of the hearing and showed up sixty strong to have their say. Sigh. The little people can be so tiresome. But the Republicans were magnanimous. They allowed the hoi polloi to waste several hours of their valuable time. Twenty people spoke feelingly about government’s responsibility to protect its citizens from corporations misusing their power (like, say, dropping a patient’s coverage when he gets sick or refusing to cover people with pre-existing conditions). Ordinary people, they maintained, should not have their lives shortened or ended to in order to bloat the bottom line at health care companies.  It was all so boring from the point of view of a senator who has full health coverage, thanks to the citizens of this state. So Cunningham, decided to make the best of it. She texted.

And got called out.