[Girlene]

Red, we need one of your slide shows from CNN or HardBall featuring Murtha, please.

"It's too late for an apology," Darryl Sharratt of Canonsburg, Pa., told Cybercast News Service...

Smooth, this is excellent news and a great idea. Does anybody know the procedure for taking a vote on censure? I would like to see each representative be accountable in a vote like this. That's an easy vote, unless you sell out because Murtha holds some purse strings.

[smoothsailing]

Does anybody know the procedure for taking a vote on censure?

I'm not a constitutional expert (but I did stay in a Holiday Inn a while back), but I think a request for a vote for censure can be brought to the floor in a deliberative body by any member at any time during normal business once the member rises and is recognised by the presiding officer or "chair" in the case of the U.S.House of Representatives.

Censure itself has no standing or reference in the U.S. Constitution so far as I know, so it would be a procedural and symbolic affair, allowed by standing rules of the House, and only meaningful if agreed to by a majority of those voting on a censure motion.

It would in essence be the equivalent of a public reprimand. There is no penalty to the member who is censured, other than public embarassment.

It's a little more serious than a slap on the wrist, I suppose.