Thanks for the information on the Rules Committee Chairman responsibilities.
Does this figurehead ever make any decisions that might require vertabrae to carry them out?
Rarely.
Republicans all, found themselves in varying degrees of difficulty after remarks interpreted by many as racially insensitive at best and racist at worst.
So far, however, none has attracted as much attention or suffered as much as Lott, who bowed to intense pressure from inside and outside his party and gave up his position as incoming Senate majority leader a week ago.
''In a way, I guess the Lott situation might be teasing out all the slow learners,'' says Merle Black, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta who has written extensively on racial politics in the South.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20021227/ts_usatoday/4734623