United States Representatives Pete Sessions (R-TX) and Mike Fitzpatrick (R-PA) both failed to attend the swearing in ceremony as required by the United States Constitution. Despite not swearing in, both representatives have been casting votes as if they were legal.
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January 6th, 2011

The Republicans passed an important rules package and a number of procedural motions to repeal health care reform using the votes of Sessions and Fitzpatrick. Technically, that could invalidate all of the business of the House for the last two days. Ironically, the Republicans read the United States Constitution to open the House session today, but no one must have been listening to the portion which requires House members to be sworn in before performing their duties. As soon as the Republicans did discover their error late this afternoon they immediately went into recess to try and resolve the matter.

The only way for Republicans to get around the problem is to now pass a motion by unanimous consent which cleans up the mess. However, a unanimous consent motion, by definition, requires the consent of the minority. As a result, Republicans are literally forced to go to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to ask her if she will consent to the motion. It is unclear at this time if Pelosi will give the Republicans grace for what now appears to be a fairly large error.

The story gets worse for Republicans when it comes to the reason for the two men's absences. Both were somewhere else in the Capitol Building with about 500 supporters for a "victory lap" event. Sessions was in charge of the Republican Party's strategy to take back the House, and was celebrating with Fitzpatrick and others instead of taking his constitutionally-required oath.