This week in 1840, the House of Reps formalized its longstanding gag rule. “Wait a minute, CWH, we can GAG them? Let’s shut up half the chamber!” No, this only covered petitions about slavery -- in the proud American tradition of NOT discussing the one thing we ought to be ...

Defending the gag rule (which saw 130,000 petitions on slavery “tabled”) was John C. Calhoun, the spiritual godfather of today’s assholes, and, as I argued in my (sadly rejected) PhD thesis, the evil walking corpse that Abe Lincoln: Vampire Hunter SHOULD have been tracking down.

Leading the opposition (when he WASN’T guest starring as a small-town pharmacist/serial killer on “Murder She Wrote”) was former prez John Qunicy Adams, who delighted in bending the rules to allude to slavery in wider contexts. “Am I gagged or am I not?” he once famously asked.

As anti-slavery opinion grew, more Reps sided with Adams, who attacked the gag rule as a violation of First Amendment rights (for those Americans who, umm, had them.) And this WAS a free speech violation -- another reason, if you know your history, you hope this lady [REDACTED].

But just think: A large number of Reps once saw fit to banish even the DISCUSSION of as crucial an issue as slavery, to blindfold themselves to a glaring Evil in their midst, to clamp their hands on their ears and shout, “Nahnahnah I can’t hear you!”

How times have changed, eh?