If you are following the protests in Wisconsin over the state’s budget bill, you know that the Democratic state senators have fled to Illinois as a way of stopping a vote on union legislation.
Such a move is not unprecedented in American history. In fact, as the Chicago Tribune reported earlier this week, Abraham Lincoln once did the same thing. As an Illinois state legislator, Lincoln jumped out a second story window of a local Springfield saloon in order to avoid being rounded up for a quorum to vote on a transportation bill that he and the fellow members of his Whig party opposed.
Randall Stephens has some thorough coverage of this historical analogy over at the blog of The Historical Society.
Precedent, yeah… doesn't mean it's a good way of doing business…