for democrats. republicans, 202-748-8001. and independents, 202-748-8002. some of the back-and-forth you saw between speaker pelosi and stephen hawking's joins us.

good morning and could you put in perspective the events that you saw yesterday considering the way you've covered the house over the years? >> i would say that it has always become a little bit tiresome and clichi. to say i've never seen anything like this before. we've taken it to a new level but it seemed to me as though being up in the capital yesterday, we the congress, or congress, not we, took the anger and vitriol up a new notch. i've never seen a presiding officer relinquish the chair and tossed down the gavel and frustration. i have never heard a speaker of the house accuse a president of the united states of being racist and i had never

seen, actually, a republican try to have the speaker shut down for the rest of the day. that's the rest time that it happened even before i got to congress. back in 1985, and that i would mark as one of the opening bells of this decline of civility and discourse at the capital when the speaker became frustrated with newt gingrich and his words were taken down. >> the procedure of what you can say and what sounds wrong with her statement? >> the rules are exclusively clear.

what is within bounds or out of bounds in terms of decorum and rhetoric are written down in a book called jefferson's manual. it's the book a parliamentary procedure that thomas jefferson wrote in the earliest days of the republic. the rules we are talking about now were not enumerated by jefferson. there has been some talk about a real book written a couple of centuries ago when rhetoric was different and written by someone who was a slaveholder. what they are is an enumeration of the precedents that have been set over the last 200 years. on page 190 it says references to racial or other discrimination on part of the president are not in order. as such remarks may not refer

to the president as a racist and goes on to say or to him having made a bigoted or racist statement. most of those are as recently as five years ago. it was clear that mrs. pelosi's comments were out of line in that context. eventually the democrats then did a clever thing which to represent the majority would have done such a thing which is to acknowledge that she was out of order by the rules but to essentially say let's use our majority muscle to let her set a somewhat different precedent. >> we are the chair use the term engaging personalities yesterday. what does that mean? >> one of the sort of that rock rules for decorum is that you are not supposed to be talking about the personal traits, the

personal characteristics of the people you are talking about. you are supposed to be confining your speech to policy and what may have been said or not said but to not get into personal characteristics. that was what mr. collins the ranking republican began with when he asked that her herds her words be stricken and when they say the words be taken down the punishments are supposed to be the speech is excised from official proceedings, and the person who has said the offensive thing is supposed to be prohibited from saying anything for the rest of the debate on that topic. engaging as part of it but there's an even more explicit prohibition on what you can and cannot say. >> if you go to c-span's twitter account there is a tweet courtesy of our archives

leading up to what i guess was talking about. when it comes to abandoning the post or watching over the house have you seen that before? >> not everybody gets to preside over the house. only members of the majority party. it's a little bit like the pitching staff. there are certain people called on to do certain types of jobs and mr. cleaver is one of the presiding officers who gets called on to preside on highly emotional times. to see him of all people walk off, he's an ordained minister

and is known to be personally passionate but be someone who can get two sides to call rhetoric and to see him be frustrated was particularly interesting. i've seen presiding officers need to leave the room to take a phone call or a bathroom break but i've never seen them walk off and frustration. >> your reporting on the house when it comes to this idea civility can that be restored when you see big events like this one? >> it's going to be tough and maybe you've mentioned this but it's not going to get any easier. the houses moving on right away to hold the atty. gen. and secretary of commerce and contempt of congress and then there will be another test vote on a call for impeachment. it will happen so there's going

to be certainly other topics that will produce similarly incendiary rhetoric. if i may offer, looking back on my time covering congress the last time we had a period where there was a civility reset was sadly after september 11. it takes something that dramatic and galvanizing to get people to put vitriolic talking points away for the good of the country. i hope it will not take a similarly dramatic and nationally hurtful moment but that's to be where we have come to. >> editor-in-chief of the fulcrum and you can find his work at the fulcrum.us. thank you for your time and perspective.