It’s an unwritten courtesy that
oftenin almost all cases doesn’t extend to the real working world where employees are forced to file for medical disability or take unpaid leave.
FIFY
Unwritten courtesy? Like giving a President’s well-qualified SCOTUS nominee a hearing? Democrats from states with GOP governors better assume that the courtesy is worth the paper it is written on.
or lose their jobs.
Oh come on. These are elected officials, so it’s not like it’s a “courtesy” to allow them to return to work.
I suppose the leadership could strip them of committee assignments, or in extreme cases impeach them (not sure what the process would be). But short of that, if they don’t resign, does Congress have any way to force them out? It’s really between the congressman and his constituents.
The constitution grants each body the right to both make its own rules and expel members. They can be forced out by a 2/3 vote of the body.
John McCain is not coming back. Glioblastoma takes no prisoners. Even if McCain has the ability to speak a bit or make an appearance in DC, he’s not going to be in any condition to do his job. Hold a special election and get on with the nation’s business. He served our country well; let him go in peace.
GBM is essentially terminal, as everyone knows. But it is also expensive. Without decent insurance, like that provided by the ACA, it is the kind of illness that could lead to bankruptcy for many individuals. Sen. John McCain has been a ducking and dodging coward on, or a supporter of, the many Republican attempts to gut the ACA. There is every indication that he would deny Americans even a diluted version of the health coverage he has thanks to taxpayers. There is a deep deep sickness among Republicans; they are a blight on the country, against which we do not have coverage. Will McCain’s eyes be opened by his personal tragedy? Pretty bad that it would take a personal tragedy to make you see; worse if even that can’t do the trick.
We now know that they didn’t actually remove a clot last Friday, as the statement they released that day seemed to say. They removed as much of the glioblastoma as they could at that surgery, which was done exactly for that purpose, as the tumor mass would have shown up on the same imaging that showed the hematoma – it was not chanced upon during a surgery designed to remove a hematome. Whatever clotted blood they removed last Friday was purely incidental to removing the tumor. It’s not as if they out and out lied, as by mentioning in their statement that they were awaiting pathology, they effectively were saying that a mass had been removed, because you don’t send a hematoma for pathology.
I’m not sure what part of this kabuki I find more puzzling, that McCain’s people released a statement that walked some fine line between phrasing the situation in a way designed to conceal the mass from the public, while putting in the mention of awaiting pathology to clue in people who know anything medical that there was a mass, or that the media and the medical people they consulted played along. What was the point of deception, on either side?
Our political culture has gotten so reflexively insincere, that the politicians message even when it makes no sense, serves no purpose. And the media goes along because they no longer even try to make sense of the press releases they’re handed, or anything else the politicos tell them. They take it for granted they’re being played, but no longer understand what other role they might play.
House and Senate can expel any of their members with a 2/3 vote. I’ve only heard of this happening in response to a criminal conviction.
Part of this is courtesy, but part of it is to keep power structures in place. If you lose the ancient member, you lose all their seniority, and you may need to reshuffle. (And, of course, in some cases you get someone who will vote differently.)
as happened in PA with Specter and Looney Toomey
Universities are about the most liberal employers I know of (with regard to academic staff – professional and clerical and blue collar staff not so much). Even there, it’s generally a maximum of one semester. After that, you have to go on disability with a leave of absence if recovery is expected. If recovery isn’t expected people who are eligible for retirement are expected to retire.
And I’ll bet an Andy that this Congressional courtesy does not extend to their staffers.
Will McCain’s eyes be opened by the tragedy?
Senator McCain has the luxury of knowing his death is imminent. He can no longer think he too might live to be 100. That alone will enlighten him to the very short time he now has to do anything. So he can live each day as if it were his last now. That cuts through a lot of the BS people accept as the way things are.
His fellow Senators will not suffer any such enlightenment. The man could deliver the best come to FSM speech in history bringing tears to his colleagues eyes and swooning coverage on the nightly news and newspaper editorials. Then they would blow their noses, wipe their eyes and proceed exactly as they are now.
The point was that if it was a benign mass (highly unlikely, but low probability events do occur) there would never have been another mention of the matter.
No matter how you cut it, in so many way, these individuals of privilege should not be able to ignore those of us who place them in these seats. We need a Congress that is not a lifetime job and that members are forced to work in and walk the hometown streets for the majority of the yearly duties. Citizen legislators. Not ordained nobility. They get elected then completely forget from whence they came.
I’m thinking of a friend who went on disability leave for surgery, was fired (at will) a few weeks after she got back (by a church-owned nonprofit). I’m also thinking of my dad, who hung on for more than a year after he was effectively unable to do his job, because his boss wanted a reliable vote in board meetings. Yep, congress is different
An object in motion tends to stay in motion.
It would be nice if knowledge of imminent death brought enlightenment to people, but sadly that isn’t usually the case. The best we can hope for is that he has a lot more loyalty to Congress as an institution than to the Trumpified GOP. It’s probably going to come down to whether he sees McConnell as a defender or as an enabler.
Hey, I’m pretty sure I’ve heard this term-limit idea before. If you want to give lobbyists even more power than they have, it’s a great way to go.
Something like a meningioma would look different from a glioblastoma on imaging. They know the were dealing with a malignancy before the surgery started. And the statement was released after the surgery, so they also had its gross appearance, the ease or difficulty of removal, and perhaps even frozen sections, all of which would have told them if this was a meningioma vs malignancy.
And if somehow all of that hadn’t already answered the question, they still weren’t sure when they released the statement, and they were planning to never say anything more if it had been a meningioma, why mention that they were waiting on pathology results? They would have just said that they had evacuated a hematoma and left it at that if their goal was simply deception.