I know the maxim is that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, but how do you explain this? It appears to be an example of a total fool leading the slightly less foolish.

Justice Joseph W. Hatchett, regarded as a trailblazer who was the first black State Supreme Court justice south of the Mason-Dixon line and the first black judge to serve on the Florida Supreme Court, died last year at 88. A bill to name a federal courthouse in Tallahassee after him was sponsored by Florida’s two Republican senators and unanimously supported by the state’s 27 House members. Nothing stood in the way of the passage of a rare bipartisan bill, not that such bills are usually problematical. The naming of federal buildings is a routine tasks in Congress, is usually a consensus matter. In the Senate, such honors are bestowed without debate or even a recorded vote, which is how the bill to honor  Hatchett got through the Senate last year. In the House, such matters are typically on a fast-track reserved for uncontroversial matters, with limited debate and a two-thirds majority requirement. Yet the the bill honoring Hatchet failed in the House a 238 to 187, falling short of the two-thirds majority with almost 90% of Republicans flipping and voting against the bill.

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