Welcome to D.C. Politics, Circa 2015 or 2017

If you assume (as I do) that the GOP is going to regain the Senate in 2014 and hold both houses of Congress for at least a few more electoral cycles, then it's only a matter of time before this is the kind of news we get from D.C., not just from state capitals. And I must say, this really is the quintessence of modern Republicanism, on so many levels:

Senate tacks sweeping abortion legislation onto Sharia law bill

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Senators on Tuesday tacked a suite of new restrictions and regulations pertaining to abortion clinics onto a bill dealing with the application of foreign laws in North Carolina family courts.

The measure was unveiled unexpectedly during an unusual late-day committee meeting....

Just before 5:20 p.m., Senate Rules Chairman Tom Apodaca, R-Henderson, announced a recess and said the Senate Judiciary 1 Committee would meet at 5:30 p.m.

Until then, the committee's calendar only listed House Bill 695, which prohibits the recognition of foreign law, such as Islamic Sharia law, in family courts.

However, when the committee convened at 5:30 p.m., it quickly took up an amendment to revise HB 695 to include the regulations on abortion.

"They're doing it quietly on Fourth of July weekend because they've seen what's going on in Texas and know that women will turn out," Melissa Reed, vice president of Public Policy for Planned Parenthood Health Systems said, referring to the protests surrounding a similar bill in Texas....

Yup -- Republicans slipped provisions that will shut down all but one abortion clinic in the state into a bill dealing with the menace of sharia law -- that monster the GOP sees under every bed, where the rest of us see nothing.

This is what they're going to be doing to Obama in his last two years or to Hillary in her first two. Or\ this is the kind of legislation that's going to make up the First Hundred Days of President Walker or Christie or Rubio or, God help us, Perry.

A meme going around yesterday was that this is a "historically lazy Congress" because it's managed to pass only 15 legislative items in the first half of the year. But that's not laziness. We have a party that controls the White House and the Senate (at least on paper) and another party that uses House control as a gun to the White House/Senate party's head, to prevent America from being governed at all. Yes, if you're in a hostage situation, the people holding the guns and the people with the guns to their heads are relatively inactive -- but laziness is not the reason.

Once Republicans take the Senate, Congress isn't going to be inactive. Congressional Republicans, like their GOP counterparts in the states, are going to be the worst, full of passionate intensity.