[netmilsmom]

I think you are absolutely correct.

They HAD to leave. Otherwise they would have been locked in, no food, no water, no electricity, no AC. Or the DC police would have arrested them for loitering. Not a single rep had any business on that floor, the session was closed and therefore the laws that protected them were closed too.

This is not a big Hollywood movie where Jimmy Stewart falls over in filibuster and the big guns back off. Nancy the beast would push it all the way.

Let's see what happens next.

[Secret Agent Man]

Colonists finally, after exhausting all other political and personal ways, separated from King George.

Who will lead us against Queen Bee Pelosi?

[nathanbedford]

police would have arrested them for loitering. Not a single rep had any business on that floor, the session was closed and therefore the laws that protected them were closed too.

I'm not sure that is the case, at least I am not sure that the case is clear. Here is what article 1 section 6 of the constitution has to say:

Section 6. The Senators and Representatives shall receive a compensation for their services, to be ascertained by law, and paid out of the treasury of the United States. They shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any speech or debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other place.

If you conclude that they were not protected because the house was not in session, they were anyway protected because they were "returning from same."The Constitution does not say they may not loiter on the way home. Surely you cannot argue that there was a breach of the peace.

Not even Nancy Polisi, however,would be stupid enough to arrest United States Representatives in the Capitol building for debating an empty well of the House. One can only wish that she had done so.