GOP Goes With 'Pompous Sausagefest' Theme For Contraception Hearing

Here's a fun game! Look at the above photo of the panel invited to testify at serial car thief Darrell Issa's House Oversight and Government Reform hearing this morning on "religious liberty" and "freedom of conscience," with regards to the ongoing contraception and women's health donnybrook. Do you notice something... missing... at this tiresome preachfest about the evils of third-party payment options for ladies' birth control pills? That's right, there is not one Vagina-American sitting on this panel, just five deeply conservative religious men.* Two female Democrats walked out of the hearing, as did one male Democrat (such a sweetie!)

The members who walked out -- including DC's very own useless but sort of hilarious Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, who compared the hearing to that of an "autocratic regime" -- were wise to do so, and not merely as a means of authoritatively registering their complaint. The whole hearing was stupid and absurd in every way! Let's even issue a warning for everyone who watches the clip below: You will see Darrell Issa flanked by large portraits of JFK, Martin Luther King Jr., and Gandhi, as these are the props he brought to his pompous carnival show-hearing. Your brain may shut off for the rest of the day if you play this clip.

Things couldn't have gotten much dumber after that, though, right? Let's check to see if anything else happened, on Twitter:

Are they gonna go full-out Schiavo on this issue? Yikes.

*UPDATE: The second, less JFK/MLK/Gandhi-ishround of paneling does feature a wholetwofemale panelists. This -- to reiterate -- is in contrast to the first panel, which featured zero women.