When I was in high school, one year we had a teacher strike after a particularly harsh winter. It was a pretty big deal, though I missed most of it because I was out of the country. Anyway, because of the strike and weather, we'd gone over our yearly allotment of snow days, and the school board had decided to keep class in session an extra week at the end of the year.
Naturally, the student body opposed this. We made a decision to state a walkout. So at 1:20 or whatever time, we all got up and walked out smugly, proud of using a time-honored form of protest to let our feelings be known on the subject. About 70% of the students left. We stood in the back parking lot chanting or some shit ("FREE MR. CLARK") for about 45 minutes until the doors opened ans the superintendent appeared with a megaphone. He told us that he appreciated our feelings, and that this would be taken into account for the hearings they were having later that week.
I wish I could say that I felt strongly about it. that I was standing up for my rights as a student and wanted my voice to be heard. But, like most of my fellow activists, we just didn't want more school. and seriously, what better way to protest more school by cutting class? It's win-win! Anyway, the super thanked us for our time and then asked us to return to class. About half the crown started shuffling back towards the school, confident that their point had been made. The rest of us just stood there.
"Wait, we gotta go back to class?", "I'm not going back in there", "I've got a bag of mushrooms in my car", "screw this, I'm cutting my lunch right now"
so the remains of this protest were still out there, sorta wincing at the prospect of going back into class after less than an hour. We all took a step back away from the school. The super took a step towards us.
We took two steps back.
The Super started walking.
"RUN!" a friend of mine yelled, and the remaining hundred or two left just bolted off into the woods behind my school. We jumped fences, found trails and kept on running. Through the retirement community, through the woods, to the McDonald's about a mile away. A calm, suburban fast food joint went from a dead early afternoon to housing the most obnoxious and ill-intentioned group of miscreants that could be scraped from the dregs of my high school. Kids were smoking pot in the bathroom, pouring booze into their soft drink cups, just terrorizing everyone.
The bulk of us ended up going to a park or something for the rest of the day, most of us getting pretty heavily punished in the classes we'd cut. I think I might have failed French that year because of it.

So, the GOP staged a walkout today to protest the contempt charges that the Dems slipped in for Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten. Minority leader Boehner called it a partisan fishing expedition and they all got up and walked out.

Are you for real with this? Really? I only ask, because you're supposed to be the grownup party. A walkout? I wish I could say that these guys just wanted to go get high in a McDonald's bathroom, or maybe just wanted to play the monopoly game to see if they won a free cheeseburger. or even were just sick of the tedium that most accompany being locked up in that place a whopping 150 days a year. But what it comes down to is that these guys weren't gonna get their way so they wanted to throw a hissyfit and do it in front of the press.
Isn't it hard to pitch a fit about this being a partisan action when you REMOVE YOUR PARTY from the action? Also, the Dems have had many, many many occasions to stage protest at plenty of your moves, but didn't. As much as they were pissing me off, they were being the bigger men and women. I still think it was wrong, but I hold a new respect for those guys after watching an ENTIRE party in out political process act like petulant children. Stop it. Knock it the fuck off.
From here on out, you idiots (ALL OF YOU IDIOTS ON BOTH SIDES OF THE AISLE) should just stop this pissing and moaning and just grow up. Work together for this country. Make some goddamned compromises. or burn the whole system down. Because I'm sick of this fingerpointing, dirty politics shit. I hope you're sick of it, too. We're supposed to be better than this. We're supposed to be the best! I just wish you'd stop wiping your ass with the laws of this country long enough to read them.
There's dozens of people that I don't agree with at my work. There's a lot of them I don't even like. You know how I work with them, though? (wait, how do I do that?) Oh yeah, by not being completely retarded. Nut up and do your goddamned job already. Stop wasting all of our goddamned time and money with this.
Fact is, Miers and Bolten ignored subpoenas. Which is illegal. Stop acting like we're hiring a third-party group to smear them in the press by telling lies about their service to their country. and stop throwing "national security" around like you're a goddamned cheerleader. Find a new excuse. There's millions of them. Personally, I think eczema would be a funny one, but anything that isn't some bullshit about terrorists. You had 6 years of pissing all over our laws and civil rights. You bullshitted your way into out personal information and then sold it off to Choicepoint a long time ago. You've made weapons contractors richer and richer and richer in the name of national security. You've instilled a few and mistrust in this nation that will never heal in my lifetime. Thanks for that, by the way. If you haven't been able to make our country safe with this, then you're more than likely doing it wrong.

and if you're a GOP congressman that doesn't care about this, that is just going along with this so you get party support for some resolution you're working on, you're the worst of the bunch. Shame on you. If you know this is pure grandstanding and go along with it anyway, then you don't deserve to represent your pet cat, let alone the poor saps you're actually supposed to be helping.

oh and I swear if I found out that you were all humming "Battle Hymn of the Republic" or some other purple-thumbed shit while you walked out I'm driving to Washington and renting Michael Moore's ice cream truck and we'll see what sort of stuff I can make up.